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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.
Christopher Hunter, Ching Ng, Mehdi Reisi Fard, Zhegang Ma, Sai Zhang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 1680-1687
PSA 2021 Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2234714
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear power industry have evaluated and discussed various assumptions and methods for the treatment of potential common-cause failures (CCFs) in event and condition assessments (ECAs), specifically risk assessments performed as part of the NRC’s Significance Determination Process (SDP) in recent years. The basis for how a potential CCF is treated in SDP risk assessments is provided in NUREG-2225, “Basis for the Treatment of Potential Common-Cause Failure in the Significance Determination Process.” In light of new information and advancements in probabilistic risk assessment technology, the NRC and Idaho National Laboratory (INL) have continued the development of the causal alpha factor method (CAFM) for potential use in ECAs. The NRC and INL evaluated the suitability of using CAFM in SDP evaluations and reviewed the methodology to identify any potential data gaps.
Furthermore, an investigation was performed on the practice of common-cause component groups to determine if changes are needed to ensure that CCF is appropriately accounted for in the Standardized Plant Analysis Risk models. In addition, a focused review of the existing method that estimates CCF parameters was performed to determine if the assumptions used in the existing process result in CCF parameters that are representative of current industry performance. It was also desired to gather a better understanding of the aspects of the alpha factor method and data calculation process that either have significant effects on the CCF parameters and/or increase the uncertainties associated with these parameters. This paper provides a summary of recently completed work, including insights, conclusions, and recommendations from this effort.