So in 2012 it took me almost a year from touring ORNL to releasing any footage... part of the reason behind that was I had freedom to capture everything, and we sorted out what was releasable in post-production review.
But the other part was the darn badges... the gall-darn security badges I didn't ask people to hide. So an insane amount of effort (on an at-the-time underpowered PC) was dedicated to blurring badges. (And hiding badges behind ugly black rectangles because blurring was hard.)
Dr. David Holcomb received permission, and was nice enough to be interviewed by me, before my return flight out of Knoxville on Oct 5th. We met at a city park in Oak Ridge (the city, not-the-lab), and I think I did a slightly better job asking questions than in 2012. David was not wearing a badge.
I'm posting this as semi-raw footage. I'm sure it will be crazy-useful in narrative (or promotional) videos, just as David's moments shot in 2012 were put to good use beyond the original 2012 tour video. As people attempt to communicate Nuclear, feel free to either rip this off YouTube or ping me for a high-bandwidth MP4. I can supply alternate camera angles if needed.
Some useful timecodes...
00:49 What changed over the past 5 years?
02:13 Conference changed over years?
03:55 Your work changed over years?
04:31 Current challenges of commercialization?
06:14 What licensing has changed?
08:24 Knock-on effects from licencing changes?
10:41 Fluid Fuel Reactors 1958?
13:11 How to learn about MSR today?
14:14 How original researchers holding up?
16:09 You researcher or manager?
17:01 Corrosion problem?
19:48 MSR design choices?
21:51 How became interested in nuclear?
22:32 Fictional work explaining energy perspective?
24:25 Public misconception about nuclear?
25:46 Funding changes?
28:50 How has funding changed since 2012?
29:48 MSRE documentaries and how found?
35:35 Ongoing research video capture?
37:31 Video not photos and reports?
38:33 Opinions on Alvin Weinberg?
39:55 Positive direction. Early phase. Hope 2030.
41:48 Educational recommendation for MSR work?
My Suggestions to ORNL
I emailed Lou Qualls after the workshop. If any of my suggestions seem sane consider bouncing them off your own pertinent national lab(s).
1. How can I/we/anyone help get more MSR related footage made available? Either more footage scanned, or existing (declassified) footage scanned at higher (2160p not 480p) resolutions? What are the costs involved?
2. Workshop expenses were reasonable, it was travel and hotel that was expensive (says the Canadian). If the conference cost more, I wouldn't care. The (pretty big) ORNL conference venue was packed.
3. Fluid Fuel Reactors [1958] needs to be released on Kindle. I'm all ready to go, just need permission in the form of a legal document to submit to Amazon. I have no idea how DOE lawyer is perceiving my request, and why I might be still pursuing this since 2015. DOE could publish it to Kindle themselves tomorrow, and I'd stop asking.
4. ORNL's 2018 MSR Workshop was not video captured, and I was not allowed to capture. While I can appreciate not every presenter wants the whole world to see their talk, there are also presenters who want their talk captured. ORNL could capture everything, break up the MP4 stream using a tool such as FFMPEG into presenter-specific chunks, and ensure each presenter got only their own talk on video, on affordable USB thumb-drives. (Unlike most other conferences I've attended, ORNL has their own operating video capture infrastructure and I'm completely unnecessary for capturing lectures. They just don't.)
One-on-One Interviews
My time at ORNL (and your funding) was put to use trying to line up one-on-one interviews. I'll be posting them semi-raw-footage style like this. Hopefully I won't be the only one using them to construct more complex videos on nuclear.