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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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!
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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.
Douglas M. Gerstner, James R. Parry, David J. Broussard, Brandon L. Moon, Anthony W. LaPorta, Charles P. Forshee, Lawrence J. Harrison, Monty L. Conley
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 10 | October 2019 | Pages 1266-1289
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1556993
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The TREAT facility suspended operations in 1994 after decades of highly successful operation. The TREAT facility began operations in 1958 with a hazards summary report that met the safety-basis regulatory requirements at that time. The TREAT safety basis was later updated in the early 1980s to include a Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR) and Technical Specifications (TSs) that met the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) regulatory requirements at that time. The last substantial update of the TREAT safety-basis documents was performed in 1988 prior to suspension of operations in 1994. After the last update, significant changes in DOE regulatory foundation occurred with nuclear safety rule codification in 10 CFR 830, “Nuclear Safety Management.”
To support resumption of transient testing operations, a complete modernization and a significant rewrite of the TREAT safety-basis documents were required to meet 10 CFR 830, Subpart B, “Safety Basis Requirements.” In addition, a completely updated nuclear safety accident analysis was required to support the current operating strategy and a modern safety posture, as well as bound the safe operations of future experiments.
No one clear regulatory format and content template or guide exists for the FSAR and TS for a pulse-type, air-cooled, graphite-moderated DOE reactor such as TREAT. This paper discusses the unique challenges with (1) updating the TREAT safety basis to current DOE regulatory requirements to support the resumption of transient testing operations; (2) documenting that the TREAT design, safety analysis, and operations ensure that the facility is operated safely; and (3) providing an analysis that supports future experiment operations.
The successful approval of the updated TREAT safety basis was a key milestone in the Resumption of Transient Testing Program.