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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.
Kyle L. Walton, Raymond K. Maynard, Tushar K. Ghosh, Robert V. Tompson, Dabir S. Viswanath, Sudarshan K. Loyalka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 5 | May 2019 | Pages 684-693
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1521177
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Total hemispherical emissivity of Alloy 617 was measured for applications in very high temperature reactors with apparatus based on ASTM Standard C835-06. The emissivity data were obtained for the following surface conditions: (1) as-received (rolled sheets) from manufacture, (2) sandblasted with aluminum oxide beads, (3) oxidation in air at temperature of 1153 K, and (4) coated with graphite powder. For the as-received Alloy 617, emissivity increased from 0.26 to 0.34 over the temperatures 593 K to 1164 K. Sandblasting Alloy 617 with alumina beads increased the emissivity to 0.46 to 0.73 in the temperature range 600 to 1300 K (emissivity increased further when higher grit size beads were used). The oxidation of Alloy 617 gave a slight increase in emissivity from 900 to 1250 K with larger increases above 1100 K. Coating of graphite onto as-received and 60-grit sandblasted increased the emissivity by roughly 0.12 and 0.20, respectively, over the measured temperature range.
