It sounded preposterous to many when it was proposed, but a few years (and over $300,000,000) later the underground ice wall designed to contain a vast nuclear spill is almost finished.

Groundwater from the compromised plant in Fukushima poses a serious threat to Japan and the rest of the world. Over 1,000 tanks are storing hundreds of thousands of tons of the stuff, but it continues to flow.

The 100-foot-deep, mile-line Land-Side Impermeable Wall solution is designed to keep radioactive water out of the oceans. It consists of pipes filled with brine and frozen in place, kept cool by refrigeration units consuming the equivalent of 10,000+ homes’ worth electricity.

Critics point out that a concrete and steel wall would have been simpler and more predictably effective. Many see this as a last-ditch or half-baked effort, experimental at best. Only time will tell, once the system is fully operational, whether this was the right way to try and contain this crisis.

The post Fukushima Nuclear Fence: Japan’s Ice Wall is Nearly Done first appeared on Gajitz.

In much of the world, mosquitoes are considered annoying pests, but the reality is that they are one of the deadliest animals on the planet, killing over 600,000 people a year, a problem this high-tech laser system aims to permanently eliminate. In the image below, you can see the simple but deadly and effective solution in action, a small pulse of light killing the fly.

While nets, drugs and other methods have been deployed to help address the flying menaces and disease carriers, the key is eliminating their ability to approach or contact people in the first place, hence this invention that “works by combining low-cost sensor and laser technology with software to identify, track, and kill mosquitoes, thus eliminating malaria’s primary transmission vector.”

Though the primary purpose for Intellectual Ventures developing these photonic fences is one particular pest, the applications of the technology have a great deal of potential beyond that application.

For instance, the same systems could be deployed to kill pests on farms, an environmentally-friendly and lower-cost alternative to chemical pesticides. “Global Good and LSG are currently developing field-ready photonic fence prototypes to test new, efficient, and effective pest control products for health, commercial, and residential use around the world.”

The post Photonic Fence: Laser Network Zaps Mosquitoes in Midair first appeared on Gajitz.

Thanks to a close call in Washington, DC, the first proverbial shots have been fired in the coming war on domestic drone with flights now restricted around the White House. No-fly zones are not exactly new, but this represents a step away from clearing airspace around airplanes and opens the door to blocking drones in other settings as well.

Built environment expert (and author of an upcoming book on domestic burglary) Geoff Manaugh suggests that “fortifying our homes against drone incursion will be the next bull market in security: whole subdivisions designed to thwart drone flights, marketed to potential homeowners specifically for that very reason.”

This could take various forms – imagine “installing perimeter defenses or some sort of jamming blanket, an electromagnetically-active geotextile disguised beneath the mulch. Complex nets and spiderweb-like antennas go on sale at Home Depot, perfect for snaring drone rotors and leading to an explosion in suburban bird deaths.”

Given the fallibility of the firmware updates DJI and other drone manufacturers are using to create no-go zones for drones it is not so much of a stretch to imagine physical infrastructure and custom security solutions designed to create additional areas of privacy and/or provide redundancy – backup systems for when the software fails to do its job.

Of course, countermeasures could fight software with software, too – consider this scenario: “You won’t just turn on a burglar alarm with your handy smartphone app; you’ll also switch on signal-jamming networks hidden in the trees or a location-scrambling geofence camouflaged as a garden gnome at the edge of your well-mown lawn. Drones, dazzled by invisible waves of unpredictable geographic information, will perform U-turns or sudden dives, even racing off to a pre-ordained security cage where they can be pulled from the air and disabled.”

The post Drone Defense: Future of Electomagnetic & Geo-Fencing first appeared on Gajitz.