This is a long time coming...

...our tour of Oak Ridge National Labs by Flibe Energy's Kirk Sorensen, Kirk Dorius and The Baroness Bryony Worthington.

We saw a salt loop (not-operating). The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment. ORNL's historic graphite reactor and (operational) High Flux Isotope Reactor.

Candid discussion was had with Thom Mason, Douglas Kothe, David Holcomb, Jess Gehin and Steve Burnette.

This helps shape the documentary... as opposed to lecture or chroma-key delivery straight into the camera. Some of the opinions expressed by ORNL drive debate on the merits of various reactor designs.

Hiding security badges was the biggest time-sink. You'll see 3 different approaches (if you look closely). None of them were reliably automate-able. In many cases this was a frame-by-frame task. Private screeners were shared with folks looking for glimpses of security badges. This was part of the agreement with ORNL: You don't show badges.

Complain, Complain

ORNL Tour was also the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of computing power. Adobe Premiere CS6 was dipping into virtual memory. I had a really great computer with 32GB of RAM. But absolutely everything I've shot to date (and I'm still pulling in some 2011 footage) is being consolidated in a single project for this new documentary. I'd always assumed PPro could handle anything I could throw at it with 32GB RAM (I'm not James Cameron!). This Thoruim doc is a wide variety of formats, multi-cam coverage, many audio tracks from Clip+ recording devices... it probably is an unusual project.

Also, a RAID 50 speed issue had gone unresolved for many months. Resolving it requiring a firmware update of all my drive bays. This should not have erased any data, but it did. Of course I had a backup, but there's enough data that simply recovering from a backup is a multi-day process.

So all my hardware LOOKS the same, but it is in fact new CPU & motherboard (for the sake of supporting 64GB RAM) and a new RAID configuration. And of course a fresh Windows install. It just slowed me right down to get my technical house in order.

Afterwards, working with ORNL Tour footage became decently responsive. I'm no longer dipping into virtual memory. RAID speeds are sane. That's where I'm at today, hardware wise.

2013 Conferences & Lectures

I am launching a new KickStarter campaign, and would love to have your support.

The original KickStarter campaign funds are still not depleted... I've certainly ate into them (plus Shanghai was more expensive than raised) but there's still some left for animation, music and whatever post-production can remove the "$1000 documentary" feel of Thorium Remix 2011.

I'm still editing though. And 2013 lectures are approaching.

I'd like to go. I'd like to capture video. I don't want to eat into post-production budget to do it.

Could you folk uh... help me get around in 2013?

I'd estimated the doc would be completed by now (completed quite long ago). There's lots of lecture / interview / tour / discussion we put online in 2012. I can't replicate that exact process in 2013... it just takes too long to edit material for decent online presentation. And the remaining content is far less shareable in semi-raw footage form.

On the other hand, conferences offer a swarm of experts I'd be otherwise traveling around the globe to try interview.

Although TEAC5 and ThEC13 are not at all on par, cost wise, they are still both a good bang for the buck. The trick is getting as much captured as possible to assist the documentary without perpetually chasing my lecture-footage tail.

So I have a solution I'd like to try. Please check out my new KickStarter campaign for details.

One factor making a round trip to China worthwhile was me traveling with Robert Hargraves from LAX to Shanghai. That was an excellent opportunity for video interview because (as I warned him) he would be "trapped with me". Me and my video cameras.

As Kirk Sorensen, Kirk Dorius and now Robert Hargraves can attest, you do not want to be "trapped with me" for long periods of time. Particularly in an air-tight container hurtling above the ocean.

I had not captured Hargraves since TEAC3 Aim High! talk, which was 16m in length. He now elaborates on those ideas, and expands his talk to encompass the high cost of renewables.

Thus, this is a useful niche video to be shared with folks who might argue we can renewable our way out of Global Warming. What might be technically feasible (more windmills! more power transmission lines!) is not likely to happen given the economic disadvantages associated with expensive energy production.

Also, intermittent energy sources can have a negative impact on fossil fuel efficiency. This is a perfect example of unintended consequences when incentive structures do not match the desired outcome.

When I read Cheaper than Coal, this was news to me. I'd always assumed that, as expensive as renewables were, well at least solar & wind were keeping more CO2 out of the atmosphere. That is not always the case.

Robert has put these arguments in hardcover and eBook form: THORIUM Energy Cheaper than Coal. His book was the subject of our discussion as we did video interviews at LAX and in-the-plane. (Did you know it is generally frowned upon to fire up video cameras in a plane?)

You don't get to see much of that footage here... I just added a couple moments to make the video a bit more visually appealing. But there's a full interview in-the-can, and it will be used to construct TR2012 chapter on unintended consequences of feed-in tariffs. But I hope anyone who pitched in (to either campaign) and has been overwhelmed by a stream of technical lecture footage... we've got much more than that to work with.