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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.
Ross Longmore, Alessia Ceccatelli, Stuart Green, Tinashe Kanyasa, John Nally, Marta Tempra
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 1826-1839
Regular Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2208702
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A gas flow windowless multiwire proportional chamber (MWPC) for the standardization of large area sources of alpha, beta, and low-energy photon-emitting radionuclides was fully manufactured in house. Technical drawings were employed prior to construction for the optimization of the chamber design. Specific parameters were tested after manufacture according to predefined specifications. Test results are reported in this paper, together with criticalities encountered during construction and methodologies developed for their minimization. Detailed instructions for machining and assembling MWPC components are provided.
