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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.
H. Guo, T. Kooyman, P. Sciora, L. Buiron
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 11 | November 2019 | Pages 1447-1459
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1611304
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The reduction of the initial excess reactivity in fast reactor cores will enhance the inherent safety level of the cores as it does reduce the impact of control rod withdrawal (CRW) accidents. Compensation for burnup reactivity loss by means of burnable poison (BP) is considered as a possible solution to limit initial excess reactivity. Minor actinides (MAs) challenge long-term nuclear waste management, and they can be transmuted from absorber isotopes to fissile isotopes, which allows them to play the role of BPs.
Two loading modes of MAs as BPs are considered in this paper: The so-called homogeneous transmutation mode mixes MAs with the fuel, and the so-called hybrid transmutation mode packs MAs in independent pins in the fuel assemblies. The content of americium or neptunium in these two modes is considered with regard to current technological feasibility, including burnup, cladding stress, decay heat, and the neutron source of the assemblies considered here. Both of these modes are able to compensate for the reactivity loss of a 3600-MW(thermal) fast reactor and thus reduce excess reactivity at the beginning of cycle.
The impact of MA loading on the core characteristics, including power distribution, material balance, and feedback coefficient, is considered from the assembly level to the core level. The hybrid mode shows better management feasibility while the use of neptunium exhibits a lower impact on the current fuel recycling. Finally, the core behavior during a CRW transient is evaluated, which shows that the core loaded with BPs exhibits better safety performance in CRW transients due to their lower initial excess reactivity.