THREAD🧵
India's Nuclear energy achievement
The 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam has attained criticality. India just achieved something monumental in global nuclear energy.
→ 72 years: Time since Homi Bhabha conceived the plan
→ 22 years: Time to build it
→ 100% indigenous
→ ₹7,700 crore total cost
A thread on why this matters.
@NpcilOfficial@mnreindia@DAEIndia
1/7
Today, India takes a defining step in its civil nuclear journey, advancing the second stage of its nuclear programme.
The indigenously designed and built Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam has attained criticality.
This advanced reactor, capable of producing more fuel than it consumes, reflects the depth of our scientific capability and the strength of our engineering enterprise. It is a decisive step towards harnessing our vast thorium reserves in the third stage of the programme.
A proud moment for India. Congratulations to our scientists and engineers.
🚨Last night, India switched on a reactor.
Here are 9 numbers nobody is talking about:
→ 72 years: Time since Homi Bhabha conceived this plan
→ 22 years: Time to actually build it
→ ₹7,700 crore: Final cost (started at ₹3,492 crore)
→ 500 MW: Power it will generate
→ 2nd: India's global rank only Russia had this before
→ 25%: India's share of world's thorium reserves
→ 400 years: How long those reserves can power India
→ 200+: Indian companies that built it. Zero foreign designs.
→ 3: Countries that tried and quit - USA, Germany, UK
🧵 A thread that will blow your mind:
Did you know?
An explosion of zinc fireworks occurs when a human egg is activated by a sperm enzyme, and the size of these “sparks” is a direct measure of its ability to develop into an embryo.
In other words, life begins with a flash of light.
Educated Indian elite - I count myself in this - accepted what is known as the "Washington Consensus", with globalization driven by the World Economic Forum, Davos.
That era received a mortal blow during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-9, died during the pandemic and today we perform the last rites.
Here is how I believe we should navigate this new era, treating this challenge as an opportunity.
1. Every tech we do not have is deep tech and I do not mean LLMs (alone) here and it includes advanced metallurgy, composite materials, DC motors, batteries, medical equipment, network equipment, drones, jet engines, robots, bioreactors and so on and on.
2. A 5-10 year sprint to catch up in every such "basic deep tech". In some areas, like GPUs or fighter jets, it may take 10-15 years, but we must put our heads down and do it. China has done it and it can be done. We have the raw human talent in abundance and we can train. This much I know.
3. We need a long term orientation. Venture capital with 7-8 year exit cycles cannot do it. It promotes a short termism that is at odds with what our nation needs right now. More broadly, quarterly earnings cycles are a poor match for the long term catch up investment we have to make. This essentially mandates that our big industrial houses must invest heavily in R&D, keeping in mind that catch-up R&D (in particular) is not expensive, it is time-intensive.
4. More broadly, we don't want our smartest talent going into high finance - we must realize we are borrowing what failed America. It is a colossal misallocation of resources. The mortal blow of the GFC I referred to was all due to "smartest talent going into finance" in America and ultimately that is what led to MAGA, once Occupy-Wall-Street failed with the left - it is a different matter that MAGA got coopted by Wall Street.
India cannot afford to be addicted to high finance, it would lead to societal ruin. We must view making money on money with the appropriate caution that our ancients taught us.
5. I will come back to talent, the most important point of all. There is a lot of raw young talent in rural Bharat that is waiting for the opportunity. Patient capital is about nurturing this talent, bring it on stream.
Once you discover what we have discovered, you will stop fighting about reservation and so on. My own R&D team reflects our society in a deep way and without any compulsion from the government. JEE, NEET, UPSC etc do not capture the essence of this talent pool. I do not care about any of those exams, I ignore all those "signals" and go with the evidence of our own eyes to discover and nurture talent.
6. Climate change. Have you noticed how quickly the silicon valley elite dumped climate change and got on board the "energy to the max" with AI? We need EI - Energy-efficient Intelligence. Climate change is also a life style issue and Bharat has to be the light to the world in showing how to live in harmony with mother nature while building a technologically advanced society. Bharat Mata is mother nature.
We have faced far worse adversity before and we will face this. If we seize this moment, we will come to see it as a blessing in the long term.
Bharat Mata ki Jai 🙏
If you want a good quality life, choose a small town with good roads, a few restaurants, a lake, a garden, a few hospitals, 2-3 good schools, 1-2 banks, a surgery hospital, a few big brands, 1-2 theaters, and a small bus and train station.
Overall, a city with a population of less than 5,00,000 is the best place to live. These cities have all the basic plus entertainment facilities for a quality life. Drop names of similar cities if you know any!
🚨Ilya Sutskever finally confirmed
> scaling LLMs at the pre-training stage plateaued
> the compute is scaling but data isn’t and new or synthetic data isn’t moving the needle
What’s next
> same as human brain, stopped growing in size but humanity kept advancing, the agents and tools on top of LLMs will fuel the progress
> sequence to sequence learning
> agentic behavior
> teach self awareness
Think of it as the “iPhone”, which kept getting bigger and more useful from hardware point, but plateaued and the while focused shifted to applications.
2025 will be the year of Agents!
> @Replit for coding
> @seobotai for content
> @crewAIInc for the rest
This is Nayib Bukele.
He became the youngest president in El Salvador’s history at 37 and achieved what many thought was impossible.
In 4 years, he transformed one of the world’s most dangerous countries into one of the safest
Here’s how he did it 🧵
India did not enter the "hypersonic missile" group with this missile.
And that thing on the nose is an anomaly, not a feature.
Here's a quick and dirty thread on where this missile lies on the technology spectrum and what it means to India's security.
6/ Elon - who builds the most innovative companies. Oh and his factories - he builds them IN America.
But instead of helping the greatest american entrepreneur of our lifetime. They pump the brakes.
Government depts start getting handsy like it's a houseparty at diddy's.
28. The last photo (colorized) of Hachiko, the faithful dog who waited for over 9 years outside Shibuya Station for his master to return even after he had died.
Before the 1970s, everyone was hot & healthy. People ate more, smoked more, and exercised less.
And they still managed to stay fit and healthy without going low carb, avoiding dessert, or fasting.
But since then, obesity has increased almost 5x. Here's what went wrong: