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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.
Rudolf Schulten
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | October 1985 | Pages 236-239
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33722
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Besides the production of electricity, the high-temperature reactor (HTR) offers the potential for producing secondary energy carriers for the fuel and heat market. Therefore, the HTR can make a considerable contribution to solving future problems in the energy supply of the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as of the whole world. On the basis of experience with the power plants Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor, Fort St. Vrain, and THTR-300, new concepts of reactors have been proposed: the medium-sized reactor HTR 500 and the modular HTR concept. The high-temperature heat application is directed toward the refinement of fossil fuels, the long-distance energy system, and other applications, such as process steam for the chemical industry, enhanced oil recovery, and energy for steel production. The research and development program in the Prototype Plant Nuclear Process Heat and Nuclear Long-Distance Energy projects has shown very promising results. These results show that nuclear process heat is technically feasible and that it is possible to reach a commercial application in the next few decades.
