My understanding is that he was demonstrating a technique for how to bring the system to near supercriticality, without causing it. I.e. the objective was to look at the measurement devices they had and monitor them, and build an understanding of what the data was showing. This would then (in principle) be repeated by others with more specific objectives later.
Obviously they should've built a rig for that (at least), but I guess there was a "ain't nobody got time for that" attitude.
Obviously they should've built a rig for that (at least), but I guess there was a "ain't nobody got time for that" attitude.