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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.
Jie Wang, Yanan Li, Yongfeng Wang, Taosheng Li, Zaodi Zhang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 7 | July 2019 | Pages 978-986
Regular Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1575122
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fast neutron radiography (FNR) system based on the high-intensity deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion generator (HINEG) facility, which employs a high-intensity D-T fusion generator, was designed. To determine the optimal design of the FNR system, the influence of key parameters [the scattered neutron ratio ns (ratio of scattered neutrons and total neutrons at image detection system), collimator ratio L/D, distance between the sample and image detector t, and sample thickness d] on the spatial resolution and image contrast of the system was analyzed using the FLUKA code. The design parameters were optimized to reduce scattering and thus ensure better spatial resolution. The FNR system was constructed for HINEG according to the optimal design parameters, and FNR experiments were conducted to validate the simulation results and evaluate the actual spatial resolution. The experimental results showed that the spatial resolution of this FNR system is approximately 0.5 mm, which is in agreement with the calculation results.
