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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.
Helen Winberg-Wang, Ivars Neretnieks, Mikko Voutilainen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 7 | July 2019 | Pages 964-977
Regular Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1573620
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Uranine is a dye commonly used in tracer experiments; it is chosen for its high visibility even at low concentrations. Uranine solutions are slightly denser than water at the same temperature. However, in laboratory experiments uranine solutions have been known to occasionally show unpredictable flow behaviors. This paper investigates the possible effect of light-induced density change to explain some of these behaviors. Uranine has a wide light absorption spectrum for visible light, which can heat the dye solution and lower its density to below that of the surrounding water, which induces buoyancy-driven flow. Simulations are made in both one dimension and two dimensions to determine the extent of the effect. The results are then compared to different experiments with unanticipated flow patterns.
