ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
Latest News
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.
S. Joseph Cope, Robert B. Hayes
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 9 | September 2019 | Pages 1219-1235
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1590074
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The alpha activity discrimination problem between radon progeny and transuranic (TRU) isotopes is evaluated at the times relevant for radiological emergency response using temporal decay properties. This study evaluates various effects from naturally occurring radon progeny creating alpha spectral overlap with the TRU region of interest. The methodology helps to address the potential masking of a radiological threat at worst or, at best, inhibiting response efforts due to delays caused by high levels of radon progeny. This work seeks to provide a rapid, conservative TRU estimation method in as little as 30 min. Surrogate TRU activity is introduced to the assays via check sources as a validation test for discrimination against varied levels of radon progeny collected on environmental air samples. A 2-h activity decay profile counting window was sectioned into multiple combinations of 30-min increments to investigate optimal counting segments and to simulate potential field-collection scenarios with limited resource availability. The experiment sought to discriminate low levels of introduced TRU activity comparable to the natural background on each sampled filter. Using this approach, the study confirmed the utility of the estimation methodology in as little as 30 min. Additional measurement time taken in the decay profile demonstrated marked improvements in both accuracy and precision of the TRU activity estimate as expected. Studies on the potential functional dependence of fitting parameters that influence the TRU estimate and associated uncertainty may improve further model development. The methodology is flexible to accommodate any gross alpha/beta scalar counter and is designed to be implemented within a graded approach based on time and resource availability present in the response. The estimation framework enables rapid air assay with a proper technical basis in times not currently realized in radiological emergency response.