Sriganesh Murthi

Yet Another Engineer MBA, IMDB Top250 Tracker, Occasional Tweeter

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The West poured $50 billion into fast breeder nuclear reactors and abandoned every single one. India poured $900 million and just achieved criticality on the first commercially viable one outside Russia.

The US spent $15 billion. Gave up. Japan spent $12 billion. Their Monju prototype had one sodium fire in 1995 and never recovered. The UK spent $8 billion. Germany spent $6 billion. France, Italy, all walked away. Six of the richest nations on Earth concluded this technology was too hard and too expensive to pursue.

India started building in 2004 with an initial budget of $420 million. Twenty-two years, a dozen missed deadlines, and a cost doubling later, the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam just sustained a controlled fission chain reaction. The reactor is now alive.

The reason India never quit is a constraint most people have never thought about. India has only 1-2% of the world's uranium reserves. For a country of 1.4 billion people trying to build energy independence, that's a death sentence if you're running conventional nuclear.

But India has 25% of the world's thorium. The single largest national reserve on Earth.

The problem: you can't just burn thorium the way you burn uranium. A physicist named Homi Bhabha designed a three-stage nuclear program in the 1950s specifically to solve this. Stage 1: burn natural uranium in heavy water reactors, collect plutonium as a byproduct. Stage 2: feed that plutonium into fast breeder reactors, where it breeds MORE plutonium AND converts thorium into fissile uranium-233. Stage 3: burn thorium directly at scale.

India just entered Stage 2. Seventy years after Bhabha drew it up on paper.

The math on the thorium endgame is wild. At current energy consumption rates, India's thorium reserves could power the country for over 700 years. Most nuclear nations are playing a uranium game with maybe 80-100 years of runway. India is playing a completely different game with a 7x longer fuel supply.

The West quit because uranium stayed cheap and sodium coolant is terrifying. It catches fire on contact with air. It explodes on contact with water. Russia's BN-600 had 27 sodium leaks and 14 sodium fires between 1980 and 1997. And Russia kept going anyway because Russia doesn't quit nuclear projects. India watched all of that and kept going too.

When you have 1% of the uranium but 25% of the thorium, the engineering difficulty stops being a reason to quit. It becomes the price of admission to a 700-year energy supply that nobody else can access.

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@TheCinesthetic The one film that got me hooked to film noir and gained massive respect for Billy Wilder.

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@nothing @grok Nothing Phone 3 White (16+512GB)

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@IamEmily2050 With a few edits. Brilliant prompt! This was using 2.5 Flash.

[Andrew Marshall @AndyMarshall86]

A great #RolandGarros final. The scoring system in tennis is so good. The dynamic finishing line adds so much drama.

[Royal Challengers Bengaluru @RCBTweets]

Mr Nags gets a little emotional, but carries his humour along, as he gatecrashes into the field of play, after last night’s incredible win. 😂

#PlayBold #ನಮ್ಮRCB #IPL2025 #RCBvPBKS

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

This is quite brilliant!

[Grant Slatton @GrantSlatton]

tremendous alpha right now in sending your wife photos of yall converted to studio ghibli anime

[Paul Dennett @PaulDennett_]

The Boxing Day Test crowd is going to be huge.

But it’s not going to beat the all-time record.

That was 350,534. To see Bradman.

The most ever for a Test.

And I think it was the best Test ever.

If you’ve never heard about it please enjoy this thread. #indvsaus #ausvind

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@EurekaForbes Pathetic customer service from you. We have an AMC for an Aquaguard Magna purifier. Raised a service complaint on Oct 5. Been 12 days and technician isn't visiting to service. The water is also not tasting good. Req # 34335548.

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@itseieio Wow. Mindblown. Great story. Could you elaborate on this part? "They found a way". And I presume these drawings were not visible on the site. They were just what it would look like if you could see a 1000x1000 canvas on screen? Each checkbox was effectively a pixel.

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@Hunterof3 @AttomLegend JJ.. unakku JJ.. dhaan highlight 😄

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

That first T20 world cup win came as a balm 4 years after the 2003 ODI WC loss. This one came much sooner. India 🔥🔥

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

Potholes on Kanakapura road just before the signal are also adding to our concerns. A foot overbridge too will be very helpful for pedestrians. Please consider fixing some of these issues to improve safety at the signal.

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@blrcitytraffic @BBMPCOMM Traffic at Sarakki signal JP Nagar is very chaotic and there are many instances of vehicles jumping the signal. A simple suggestion - Can you please upgrade the traffic lights to include a countdown timer? This junction definitely deserves one. (1/2)

[TheRandomCricketPhotosGuy @RandomCricketP1]

THREAD

What does success actually mean?

This was a question I was left wondering about after I read a small piece of conversation between Alastair Cook and Yuvraj Singh in Cook's book recently. Yeah, not two names that are found in the same sentence too often. But hear me out

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@Pepperfry Nobody has reached out on this yet. Can you please address this?

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

The team took the table top back and just filled it with wax and returned it. We expect a replacement of the table and not such a stop gap fix. We have sent multiple emails and there is no response from you. Please resolve at the earliest. (2/2)

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@KNCBcricket 4 tickets available for the warm up game. Please DM if interested https://t.co/UEOyoxgQ3x

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

4 tickets available for India vs Netherlands warm up game in Trivandrum on October 3. Rs. 900 each. 2 in Pavilion G and 2 in Pavilion J stand. DM me if you're interested.

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

4 tickets available for India vs Netherlands warm up game in Trivandrum on October 3. Rs. 900 each. 2 in Pavilion G and 2 in Pavilion J stand. DM me if you're interested.

[Sriganesh Murthi @ashegrins]

@sirpy Which Nolan movie doesn't deserve a second watch!