May 24, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
AIKEN COUNTY, S.C. (WRDW) -- A new Government Accountability Office report spells out bad news for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility that's currently under construction at the Savannah River Site.
Upon completion, the facility will convert nuclear weapons-grade plutonium into fuel that can power commercial-grade reactors. At last check, the price tag of the project had ballooned from $1.4 billion to $4.9 billion.
Now, the Department of Energy estimates that the project will cost $7.7 billion. The completion date of October 2016 has also been pushed back to November 2019.
"The cost increase and schedule delay will not be known until DOE completes its review of the contractor’s proposal and DOE’s project oversight office completes an independent cost estimate. DOE currently plans to complete its review and approve a new project baseline by September 2013," the GAO report reads.
The report cites construction problems for the recent delay and cost increase.
There are also concerns about the lack of vendors interested in the reprocessed fuel for commercial reactors. According to another recent report by the GAO, only the Tennessee Valley Authority is seriously interested.
Several members of Congress have voiced strong opposition to continuing the project. An environmental group feels costs may be the death of the MOX project, too.
"Certainly, when people look for impacts they look at big projects, because that's where the money is," said Clint Wolfe, the Executive Director of the Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness in Aiken.
He says CNTA supports the MOX facility as a way to reduce the nuclear stockpile along with Russia. He says the local economic impact will also be tremendous.
"I think this is just imperative that we see this through," he said. "[Canceling MOX] would be a tragic, tragic mistake."
Tom Clements, who represents the environmental group Friends of the Earth, says after the overrun, MOX is likely "doomed to elimination." He says the situation has turned into a "boondoggle of massive proportions."
Have information or an opinion about this story? Click here to contact the newsroom.
Copyright WRDW-TV News 12. All rights reserved. This material may not be republished without express written permission.
Kaspersky Lab warns users about the emergence online of a new version of the Gpcode ransomware program.
The program spreads via malicious websites and P2P networks.
Kaspersky Lab products detect the program as Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Gpcode.ax.
You can read more on our blog.
Kaspersky Lab is monitoring a new email worm which is currently spreading. Emails spreading the worm say “Here you have” in the subject line.
We detect the worm as Email-Worm.Win32.VBMania.
While the servers hosting related downloads have been taken down, we are keeping customers updated and protected against any new variants.
Net-Worm.Win32.Kido exploits a critical vulnerability (MS08-067) in Microsoft Windows to spread via local networks and removable storage media.
The worm disables system restore, blocks access to security websites, and downloads additional malware to infected machines.
Users are strongly recommended to ensure their antivirus databases are up to date. A patch for the vulnerability is available from Microsoft.
Detailed descriptions of Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.bt, Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.dv and Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.fx are available in the Virus Encyclopaedia. A dedicated removal tool is available here.
The new Gpcode variant encrypts files with extensions DOC, TXT, PDF, XLS, JPG, PNG, CPP, H etc. on hard drives using an RSA algorithm with a 1024-bit key.
After encrypting files, the virus leaves a text file in the folder next to the encrypted files with following message:
Currently, we detect the new variant, but we are unable to crack the 1024-bit key. Our analysts are continuing to work on both the key and the virus to resolve this issue.
Kaspersky Lab recommends that all Internet users enable maximum protection from malicious code and network attacks on their computers, refrain from executing suspicious programs received from untrustworthy sources and back up any important information on their computers.
Detection of Virus.Win32.Gpcode.ak was added to Kaspersky Anti-Virus signature databases yesterday, on June 4th, at 15:39 GMT. Please make sure to update if you haven’t already.
If you have fallen victim to Gpcode.ak, try to contact us using another computer connected to the Internet. DO NOT RESTART or POWER DOWN the potentially infected machine. Contact us by email stopgpcode@kaspersky.com and tell us the exact date and time of infection, as well everything you did on the computer in the 5 minutes before the machine was infected: which programs you have executed, which websites you have visited, etc. We'll try and help you recover any data that has been encrypted.
For more information about the malicious program, please read our weblog.
A few hours before this point, there was a noticeable increase in mail traffic of an earlier modification of Warezov - Warezov.do which featured in the October 2006 Top 20.
If you are using Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 or Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 with Proactive Protection turned on, new variants will be detected without the need to update your antivirus databases.
A full description of Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.nf is now available in the Virus Encyclopaedia.
Report: MOX facility cost inflated by billions again, delayed 3 years
