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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.
Jordan A. Evans, Scott A. Anderson, Eric J. Faierson, Delia Perez-Nunez, Sean M. McDeavitt
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 4 | April 2019 | Pages 563-581
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1502001
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this experiment, Type 316L stainless steel rods were fabricated through laser additive manufacturing (LAM) in three different orientations, and microstructural and mechanical changes induced by high dose ion irradiation were characterized based on orientation. The rods were irradiated with Fe2+ self-ions to a peak dose of 80 displacements per atom at 475°C. Results were compared to concurrently irradiated conventionally manufactured control specimens. Electron backscatter diffraction of the rods yielded statistically relevant information related to grain microstructure and texture. Transmission electron microscopy revealed a high density of elongated radiation-produced defects in the LAM specimens that were aligned with the major axes of the defects parallel to the build direction. Mechanical testing of LAM rods revealed anisotropic radiation-induced hardening, where hardening is greatest perpendicular to the build direction and least parallel to the build direction. Several radiation-induced hardening phenomena are considered that contribute to the observed anisotropic strengthening.
