Weekly Dose of Optimism #105

NYT Gets Nuke Pilled, Nuclear Pebble-Beds, Nuclear Aatmanirbhar Bharat, IL-11 Treatment, HIV Treatment

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Hi friends 👋,

Happy Friday and welcome back to our 105th Weekly Dose of Optimism.

This week’s edition is nuke-pilled, largely because a bunch of other media organizations and countries have become nuke-pilled. “The Daily”, “The All-In Podcast”, and the great nation of India — all nuke-pilled. Plus, we’re adding two more items to our list of reasons why I think healthy humans today may live much, much longer than people think.

Let’s get to it.

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(1) A Radical Reboot of Nuclear Energy

From The Daily

In Age of Miracles, Packy and Julia outline the several blockers to major adoption of nuclear in the U.S.:

1. Regulatory Hurdles: Stringent regulation makes building nuclear slow and expensive to build more nuclear capacity.

2. Public Perception and Opposition: The public fears nuclear due to historical accidents and misconceptions on safety.

3. Economic Challenges: High upfront costs and and execution risk make nuclear less attractive then alternatives.

4. Technical and Manufacturing Bottlenecks: Current buildout are slow, expensive, and impede rapid scaling.

In a recent episode of The New York Time’s podcast “The Daily,” they discuss how and to what extent each of these blockers are starting to erode and why that’s important in the U.S. today. “The Daily” dedicating an episode to nuclear momentum is important in and of itself, in that it can further help swing blocker #2 above: public perception of nuclear. The podcast gets nearly ~1M downloads per episode and consistently ranks as one of the top 5 podcasts in the world. Age of Miracles definitely nuked pilled some folks, but — and I mean no offense to big bro here — it wasn’t getting 1M downloads per episode. There’s now ~1M more folks that are probably having some version of the “wait, so nuclear isn’t this dangerous accident waiting to happen, but is actually this safe, clean source of energy that we need to hit our climate goals?” phenomena. That’s a good thing.

The pod itself describes the already ongoing shift in public perception, changes in regulatory posture, how startups like Bill Gate’s TerraPower are making big advances, and how new approaches to building nuclear are overcoming its economic challenges. This was a largely pro-nuclear pod…and a nuke-pilled New York Times is a good thing for the future of nuclear in this country.

P.S. In its Three Morning Takes (which you should subscribe to), Pirate Wires pointed out that The Times highlights another technology that’s actually good for the environment that’s unpopular with environmentalists: geoengineering. I’m not sure what fell out of the coconut tree over there, but as PW said, “If this trend persists, it's optimistic for a future where we control the weather, and not the other way around. And in general? I can't wait to delegate my climate decision making to a pocket-protector physics genius over a European teen with a penchant for Marxism.”

(2) Chinese pebble-bed reactor passes “meltdown” test

From Nuclear Newswire

New testing done at China’s Shidaowan nuclear power plant has confirmed its ability to be naturally cooled down, an industry-first milestone for achieving commercial-scale inherent safety, according to researchers.

Speaking of popular podcasts and nuclear, you may have tuned into the All-In podcast last week and learned that China achieved a pretty major breakthrough in developing truly safe nuclear energy. Friedberg broke it all down in Science Corner:

The TL;DR of what China achieved is this: China’s Shidaowan nuclear power plant demonstrated the ability to be naturally cooled down without active intervention, confirming the feasibility of "meltdown proof" reactors. The plant plant uses a high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor with pebble-bed modules that naturally disperse heat through helium gas, allowing the reactor to passively cool and automatically slow down the nuclear reaction if it gets too hot.

Nuclear, as we’ve discussed ad nauseam, is already extremely safe but building out a system that makes plants meltdown-proof is another big step in assuaging the fears against nuclear (however legitimate they may be). The development is also another clear sign that China is really pushing the limits in nuclear development, as compared to the U.S. Its buildout plans dwarf the U.S.’s current plans and the country is achieving safety breakthroughs.

It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that the U.S. needs to get its shit together on nuclear, and thanks to podcasts like the two above, more people are paying attention.

(3) India's Most Advanced Nuclear Reactor Approaches Finish Line

Pallava Bagla for NDTV

India's atomic energy program has crossed a big hurdle, the country's most advanced and most complex nuclear reactor the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) located at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu has finally got approval from India's atomic regulator to start loading the nuclear fuel and then to go ahead and initiate the controlled chain reaction.

OK, last nuclear story for the week — I promise. India's Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) has been approved to start loading nuclear fuel, marking a major milestone in India's self-reliant atomic energy program by moving towards utilizing thorium. Unlike uranium, which is relatively scarce in India, thorium is abundantly available. Thorium, when used in a breeder reactor, can be converted into fissile uranium-233, offering a long-term and sustainable energy source. India should be able to reduce dependency on imported uranium and bolster its energy self-reliance. This takes “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” — Made in India for India — to a whole other level.

The development of Indian’s PFBR faced many of the same challenges we face in the U.S. It took 20 years to get online, blew past budgets, and was mired by regulatory red tape. But just like in the U.S., ultimately the political and economic goals of India aligned with the development of PFBR and things got done. Jai ho!

(4) Blocking an inflammatory protein slows the pace of ageing

Richard Miller for Nature

Mice live longer and healthier lives when a cytokine protein called IL-11 is inhibited. The findings show how researchers can move beyond broad generalizations to engage with the nuances that modulate the pace of ageing.

Researchers have discovered that ‘switching off’ a protein called IL-11 can significantly extend the healthy lifespan of mice, by as much as 20%. The treatment reduced cancer deaths and other diseases related to inflammation and poor metabolism, which are common in ageging. When older mice (equivalent to the 55+ in human years) were treated with the IL-11 treatment, their median lifespan increased up to 25%.

IL-11 (interleukin-11) is a protein that has been traditionally misunderstood. Initially thought to be anti-inflammatory, recent research has shown that IL-11 actually promotes fibrosis (scarring of tissues) and inflammation. Oopsie daisy…little mixup! Fibrosis and chronic inflammation are key contributors to many age-related diseases and conditions. Inhbiting IL-11, thus, can slow down or prevent some of these diseases and conditions, or at least that’s what the early mice trials show.

Adding IL-11 treatment to my growing list of reasons why I think humans that can make it healthily to ~2030 are going to live much much longer lives than most people expect. Just got to keep things together for the next few years, wait for all of the science to come together, and bam you’ll unlock an extra few decades of healthy living. Don’t die yet!

(5) Seventh patient ‘cured’ of HIV: why scientists are excited

Smriti Mallapaty for Nature

A man in Germany is HIV-free after receiving stem cells that are not resistant to the virus.

Adding this one to the list too!

A 60 year old man German man is now the 7th person to be ‘cured’ of HIV after a stem-cell transplant, despite the donor having only one copy of a mutation in the CCR5 gene, not both. It was previously thought that both copies of the mutated gene are necessary for a cure, but this one copy development widens donor pool and expands the scope of potential treatments. Broadly speaking, the findings present the idea that a cure to HIV may not solely depend on targeting the CCR5 gene.

HIV prevention and treatment has come a very long way over the last couple of decades — from prevention, to treatment, and now cures. Just last week, we covered Gilead’s Sunlenca shot, which were 100% effective in preventing new HIV infections in women. This week, we’re covering a breakthrough that could lead to new HIV cures. After peaking in the early 2000’s HIV/AIDs deaths have been on a steady decline for the last ~15 years. And as prevention, treatment, and cures become more effective, accessible, and affordable, we’re excited to see that number tumble to zero over the next 15.

Bonuses!

AI existential risk probabilities are too unreliable to inform policy

Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor in AI Snake Oil

Our central claim is that AI x-risk forecasts are far too unreliable to be useful for policy, and in fact highly misleading.

Packy here. According to a Princeton CS professor and PhD candidate, it turns out that pulling probabilities out of your ass and using them to forecast the end of the world is an unreliable and highly misleading method. Who woulda thunk it?

Public Work

We talk a lot about hardware in the Weekly Dose, but the team at Cosmos built one of the coolest and most beautiful pieces of software I’ve seen in a while: Public Work, a search engine for public domain content. Search for images, click, and watch what happens.

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Have a great weekend y’all.

Thanks to Tegus for sponsoring! We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday.

Thanks for reading,

Packy + Dan