Where did you hear the story of To Use a Mountain? How did that capture your interest?

I was...

When I was in graduate school for architecture, I was doing some research on Yucca Mountain, which is the site in the film that's ultimately selected and then abandoned.

And if you do any digging into this issue of nuclear waste, you'll immediately find plenty of writing about Yucca Mountain.

But getting to the deeper, like, a backstory of the process and the other places that were also considered, I didn't have any awareness of that.

I was just researching Yucca Mountain, and I...

And, and in the process of doing so, I came across, first, this, this big report that was produced by the Department of Energy on Yucca Mountain, but then also other reports written in exactly the same fashion on the other cand- candidate sites.

Were you editing this while you were making it, or did you save everything to the end?

And so you would ask him a question, and he'd d- write yes or he'd hit yes?

No. He...

So when...

The first time, he taught me how to spell with him, because I held the iPad up, and I was gonna help him do it independently or try to, you know? He immediately grabbed my hand with his and pointed his finger like he was grounding himself and typed.

And I was like, "Oh, okay.

This is great," right? So we did yes and no questions for a little bit, and then I was like, "We're gonna see how many words you know.

Like, how many words can you spell?" So I, like, grabbed this thousand-word list, and we did a few words each day, and he spelled every single word correctly And I was like, "Okay, well, you know how to spell." And it was really strange, 'cause at the school everybody's like, "How does he know how to spell?" I'm like, "I don't know, but he is, so we're just gonna go with it." And after he had a way to truly express himself, I just saw, like, a change in him.

Wow, wow, wow.

Casey, where did the film come from? Why were you so passionate to tell this story?

Yeah, it kind of started...

In my hometown, Kingsport, Tennessee, Northeast Tennessee, which is not far from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which was one of the kind of three primary original nuclear laboratories established during the Manhattan Project.

But growing up, you know, I didn't have so much awareness of this, but it's sort of in my bones, just this nuclear history and Appalachian landscape and history.

you know, that's kind of sitting beneath the whole impetus to make the film.

But the real seed for the idea of the film came many years later when I was doing some research about Yucca Mountain, which was the site that was ultimately selected for this potential nuclear waste repository in Southern Nevada.

And I came across this series of documents that was produced by the Department of Energy on the other candidate sites.

um i mean this is this this is a film that is so utterly heartbreaking and in so many ways um What is it that you hope audiences most take away from To Use a Mountain?

And so do you think with all of that, that this is going to get a little crazy even further than it has been?

Absolutely.

Absolutely it will.

And this is, this, you know, the process and the dynamic and the themes that we see unfolding throughout the film really resonate with the present moment at the battle for the data centers.

But there's also a very direct material connection, which is that there's There's a self-proclaimed nuclear renaissance underway in the United States driven by a whole new set of technologies.

And the industry and the Department of Energy are really using this kind of data center development craze and the energy required to power these things as a justification for resurgence and renewal in the U.S. nuclear industry.

So there are a lot of proposals for new types of technologies.

But it is making people sick.

And so do you think with all of that, that this is going to get a little crazy even further than it has been?

Absolutely.

Absolutely it will.

And this is, this, you know, the process and the dynamic and the themes that we see unfolding throughout the film really resonate with the present moment at the battle for the data centers.

But there's also a very direct material connection, which is that there's There's a self-proclaimed nuclear renaissance underway in the United States driven by a whole new set of technologies.

And the industry and the Department of Energy are really using this kind of data center development craze and the energy required to power these things as a justification for resurgence and renewal in the U.S. nuclear industry.

So there are a lot of proposals for new types of technologies.

But it is making people sick.

So what drew you to this to create a documentary about that? How did you hear about all this?

Yeah.

I was doing some research on Yucca Mountain, which is the site that was ultimately selected in southern Nevada on the edge of the Nevada Test Site where the US tested many, many nuclear weapons over the course of several decades.

But anyway, I was researching Yucca Mountain.

If anyone knows anything about this issue of nuclear waste storage, then they probably have heard of Yucca Mountain, but they probably have not heard about the other candidate sites.

And as I was researching Yucca Mountain, I came across all of these reports that the Department of Energy had produced on the other candidate sites as well.

And, uh, in, in each of those 400, 500 page, you know, evaluation documents, on maybe page three, there's the same map, and it's the map of the United States with the nine candidate sites spread out across the six states I mentioned as little dots, and it says, "Candidates for the first repository." And that map just kind of was, uh, the, the, the seed for the film.

And before we wrap this up, uh, what was it like talking to some of the people, uh, that this affected, who lived in this region, and getting them to trust you as a filmmaker?

Tell me a little bit about what put you on to doing this particular wonderful documentary film called To Use a Mountain.

Thank you.

Yeah, I grew up in northeast Tennessee, not too far from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is one of the original nuclear laboratories from the Manhattan Project days, and it's still a national laboratory currently, and they do much more than nuclear science there.

But there, there's still, it's a big part of the ongoing, you know, US nuclear program.

So that was kind of in my backyard growing up in, in, uh, east Tennessee, but I didn't even have such an awareness of it then.

Later, many, many years later when I was in grad school, I was doing some research on Yucca Mountain, um, which of course was the site that was ultimately selected, you see in the film, for this geologic repository in southern Nevada.

In the course of learning about Yucca Mountain and researching documents, uh, on Yucca Mountain, I came across these reports produced by the Department of Energy on the other candidate sites in addition to Yucca Mountain, which were, you know, part of this kind of set of nine sites in, in the early 1980s that the government...

People, what are, what has the reaction been to people who have seen it?

And so you would ask him a question, and he'd d- write yes, or he'd hit yes?

No, he...

So when- the first time, he taught me how to spell with him, because I held the iPad up, and I was gonna help him do it independently or try to, you know? He immediately grabbed my hand with his and pointed his finger like he was grounding himself, and typed.

And I was like, "Oh, okay.

This is great," right? So we did yes and no questions for a little bit, and then I was like, "We're gonna see how many words you know.

Like, how many words can you spell?" So I, like, grabbed this thousand-word list, and we did a few words each day, and he spelled every single word correctly.

And I was like, "Okay, well, you know how to spell." And it was really strange, 'cause at the school everybody's like, "How does he know how to spell?" I'm like, "I don't know, but he is, so we're just gonna go with it." And after he had a way to truly express himself, I just saw, like- ...

What a, wow.