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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.
Hongdong Zhen, Songtao Yin, Lei Zhang, Ningning Wang, Bo Xu, Haijun Wang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 1 | January 2021 | Pages 54-61
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1739994
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper aims to revise the critical flow criterion and flashing inception of the analytical critical flow model and to further explore the effect of upstream conditions on critical mass fluxes. The flashing inception of the model is considered to be affected by the Reynolds number and the Jakob number. Model predictions show strong similarities with test results compared with other models, with average errors of less than 10.1% for simulated slits and 15.8% for natural cracks. Upstream parameters of the liquid, such as the stagnation pressure, subcooling, and aspect ratio, directly influence the rate of depressurization, the thermodynamic nonequilibrium constant, and the friction pressure drop, respectively, which determine the critical mass flux. This research provides the theoretical basis for accurate assessment of critical crack, providing safeguards for monitoring nuclear reactor leaks.