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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.
Steven A. Wright, Gustav Schumacher, Peter R. Henkel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | October 1985 | Pages 187-216
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33719
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The reactivity effects of the initial fuel and clad motion during unprotected loss-of-flow accidents (ULOFs) strongly influence the accident progression in liquid-metal fast breeder reactors. To study these phenomena, a series of in-pile experiments (the STAR experiments) is being performed in which clad motion and fuel dispersal are observed in small pin bundles with high-speed cinematography. The major parameters varied in the series are power level, fuel type (fresh versus preirradiated), and number of pins. The results of the first four experiments are presented. Overall, the observations made in these experiments show that ULOFs tend to have early fuel disruption caused by fission products, followed almost immediately by fuel sweepout occurring simultaneously with axial clad relocation.
