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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.
Matthieu A. André, Ross A. Burns, Paul M. Danehy, Seth R. Cadell, Brian G. Woods, Philippe M. Bardet
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 262-271
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1516954
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Molecular tagging velocimetry (MTV) is a nonintrusive velocimetry technique based on laser spectroscopy. It is particularly effective in challenging gas flow conditions encountered in thermal hydraulics where particle-based methods such as particle image (or tracking) velocimetry do not perform well. The main principles for designing and operating this diagnostic are presented as well as a set of gases that have been identified as potential seeds. Two gases [H2O and nitrous oxide (N2O)] have been characterized extensively for thermodynamic conditions ranging from standard temperature and pressure to environments encountered in integral effects test (IET) facilities for high-temperature gas reactors. A flexible, modular, and transportable laser system has been designed and demonstrated with H2O and N2O seed gases. The laser system enables determining the optimum excitation wavelength, tracer concentration, and timing parameters. Velocity precision and thermodynamic domain of applicability are discussed for both tracers. The spectroscopic nature of the diagnostics enables one to perform first-principle uncertainty analysis, which makes it attractive for validating numerical models.
Molecular tagging velocimetry is demonstrated for two flows. First, in blowdown tests with H2O seed, the unique laser system enables one of the largest dynamic ranges reported to date for velocimetry: 5000:1 (74 dB). N2O-MTV is then deployed in situ in an IET facility, i.e., the High-Temperature Test Facility at Oregon State University, during a depressurized conduction cooldown (DCC) event. Data enable researchers to gain insights into flow instabilities present during DCC. Thus, MTV shows a strong potential to gain a fundamental understanding of gas flows in nuclear thermal hydraulics and to provide validation data for numerical solvers.