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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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From operator to entrepreneur: David Garcia applies outage management lessons
David Garcia
If ComEd’s Zion plant in northern Illinois hadn’t closed in 1998, David Garcia might still be there, where he got his start in nuclear power as an operator at age 24.
But in his ninth year working there, Zion closed, and Garcia moved on to a series of new roles—including at Wisconsin’s Point Beach plant, the corporate offices of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, and on the supplier side at PaR Nuclear—into an on-the-job education that he augmented with degrees in business and divinity that he sought later in life.
Garcia started his own company—Waymaker Resource Group—in 2014. Recently, Waymaker has been supporting Holtec’s restart project at the Palisades plant with staffing and analysis. Palisades sits almost exactly due east of the fully decommissioned Zion site on the other side of Lake Michigan and is poised to operate again after what amounts to an extended outage of more than three years. Holtec also plans to build more reactors at the same site.
For Garcia, the takeaway is clear: “This industry is not going away. Nuclear power and the adjacent industries that support nuclear power—and clean energy, period—are going to be needed for decades upon decades.”
In July, Garcia talked with Nuclear News staff writer Susan Gallier about his career and what he has learned about running successful outages and other projects.
Cornelis H. M. Broeders, Mario Dalle Donne
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | October 1985 | Pages 82-95
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33711
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The work performed at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Center for the neutron physics and thermohydraulic design of an advanced pressurized water reactor is described. Investigations have been restricted to the uranium /plutonium fuel cycle and to light water as coolant/moderator. The idea is to replace the core of a Kraftwerk Union 1300-MW(electric) pressurized water reactor (PWR) with a high-converting core with only minor changes in the internals of the reactor pressure vessel. Two reference designs are presented, a homogeneous one and a heterogeneous (seed and blanket) one, which satisfy the requirement of having a negative reactivity coefficient in case of complete water loss from the core region. With the assumed plutonium vector (PWR discharge and 10-yr ex-core time), the conversion ratios for the homogeneous and the heterogeneous reactor are 0.90 and 0.96, respectively. The net electrical plant output is only marginally lower than that of the PWR (1 to 2%). The target discharge burnup of 50000 MWd/ton can be achieved by increasing the number of fuel element cycles to more than three.
