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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.
P. K. Mohapatra, P. K. Verma, D. R. Prabhu, D. R. Raut
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 8 | August 2019 | Pages 1119-1125
Regular Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1575126
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Extraction of 137Cs from 1.6 L of diluted aqueous simulated high-level waste (SHLW) (at 1 M HNO3) was carried out using a two-stage centrifugal contactor system (bowl volume 200 mL) into 2 × 10−3 M solution of calix[4]arene-bis-1,2-benzo-crown-6 in phenyltrifluoromethyl sulphone. Batch extraction studies were done to optimize the conditions for the centrifugal contactor runs. Extraction and stripping experiments were carried out at 2000 rotations per minute, keeping the organic and aqueous flow rate at 15 mL/min. Alamine 336 was used at a very low concentration (0.4 vol %) to effect efficient stripping of the extracted radiocesium. The studies were carried out using SHLW as well and the results indicated quantitative extraction and stripping in the first stage of operations while the repeat runs suggested lower extraction as well as stripping efficiencies.
