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Nuclear Power Debate in Thailand

Thailand started a nuclear project in 1966. It was approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1970.

 

As debate goes on about whether Thailand should have its first nuclear power plant, Korea Electricity Power Corporation (Kepco) warns that any such development will need close cooperation and concerted efforts among all stakeholders.

“Should Thailand need to diversify the [energy] sector to nuclear power, all agencies related to electricity development in the private and state sectors should closely work together on the sustainable development,” said Na Sang Nam, general director of Kepco. “From South Korea’s experience, nuclear power development has taken more than 14 years to make people confident in nuclear (power plant) safety.”

South Korea’s state-owned utility company itself also encountered strong protests from local people and the media even before construction started.

South Korea was the second country in Asia after Japan to build nuclear power plants. Construction of the first unit began in 1971, when the oil crisis hit. Operations began in 1978 with output of only 587 megawatts.

The total generating capacity of Korea’s nuclear power plants is now 18,500 MW from 21 reactors. It represents 29.5% of the country’s total power generation capacity and 45% of total power consumption.

Asia’s fifth largest economy will continue to expand nuclear power generation to keep pace with the increasing demand for electricity, with the goal of increasing nuclear’s share to 56% of total power generation. Eleven more reactors are scheduled to come onstream from 2010 to 2021, adding 15,200 MW in total.

South Korea is also seeking to export its nuclear technology, with a goal of exporting 80 reactors by 2030. As of 2010, Korean companies reached agreements to build a research reactor in Jordan, and four APR-1400 (Korea’s advanced power) reactors in the United Arab Emirates. They are also pursuing opportunities in Turkey and Indonesia, as well as in India and China.

In December 2010, Malaysia expressed interest in procuring South Korea’s nuclear reactor technology.

“The first priority is how serious the government is in the project’s implementation and continuity,” said Mr Na. “The development should not falter because of the changes of government.”

With limited supplies of fossil fuels, South Korea underwent a transitional period when it learned to count on nuclear power.

Kepco was the sole power utility in South Korea from 1961 to 2001. After it was split into multiple companies, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power inherited the nuclear business.

“Definitely, it (nuclear) is dangerous. But if we manage it properly with maximum safety standards, what we fear will never transpire,” said Mr Na. “We have to make people confident of the safety standards, as we have achieved in aircraft and cars which could also cause deaths if we use them carelessly and improperly.”

Mr Na says authorities need to inform the public seriously and continuously that the time is ripe for change because energy sources are limited.

Since the first unit started operation in South Korea in 1978, no serious accident has been reported.

Nonetheless, the failure at the Fukujima nuclear plant in Japan in May caused panic among more than 6,000 villagers living in the area and concerns about nuclear safety worldwide.

Mr Na said the incident also prompted Kepco to beef up preventive measures and disseminate more information to the people.

Imported coal currently accounts for 43% of all fuels used in power generation in South Korea, followed by nuclear (34%), gas (18%) and oil 3%.

Renewable energy was planned to double to 5% at the end of this year from 2.4% currently and to 10% in 2022.

Thawat Vajanapornsithi, deputy governor of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat), said Thailand also needs to diversify the fuels used in electricity production into imported coal and nuclear for sustainable development and energy security.

Greenpeace activists placed a huge barrel bearing the nuclear symbol in front of the Energy Ministry to highlight the economic risks of Thailand building the five nuclear power plants proposed in the nation’s Power Development Plan

For more than a decade, Thailand has tried to diversify away from natural gas to imported coal and nuclear. Gas now makes up 72% of the fuel for the country’s total electricity generation.

However, non-government organisations and environmental activists have called on the government to scrap the nuclear project in favour of more renewable energy and to better manage the demand side. “If we continue using gas in electricity production and delay alternative choices (coal and nuclear), it will cost the country dearly because we have to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) of which price doubles that of domestic gas [due to a subsidy],” said Mr Thawat.

Thailand in May decided to delay the 5,000-MW nuclear programme by another three years to 2023 after the devastating earthquake caused radioactive leaks at nuclear power plants in affected areas in Japan.

Thailand started a nuclear project in 1966. It was approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1970. Ao Phai in Chon Buri was selected as the site for a plant and in 1973 a uranium purchase contract was prepared. The project was shelved in 1978 after natural gas was found in the Gulf of Thailand.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

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Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

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Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

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Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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