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Conference Spotlight
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.
Tae Young Kong, Gamal Akabani, John W. Poston, Sr.
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 6 | June 2019 | Pages 781-789
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1546536
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The 2007 Recommendation of the International Commission on Radiological Protection [ICRP Publication 103, Elsevier (2007)] requires implementation of the concept of a dose constraint for members of the public living around nuclear facilities. Under the paradigm of regulatory science, the use of dose constraints is still highly debatable. This study determines whether a dose constraint is necessary for members of the public living near U.S. nuclear power plants (NPPs) using data from the years 2007 to 2009, which were provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As a result of analysis of exposure data, it is concluded that a dose constraint is not necessary for members of the public living around U.S. NPPs and that such a constraint may place an unnecessary regulatory burden on the licensees.
