“We believe the design of the facility will ensure that the seeds will stay well-preserved even if such forces as global warming raise temperatures outside the facility.”Įngineers are essentially using rock as a “cold store,” he said, an approach that has become popular on the Norwegian mainland as a way to establish energy efficient refrigeration systems. “We ran a lot of computer simulations to determine the optimum approach and believe we have found a very effective and especially energy efficient way to establish reliably cool conditions inside the vault,” said project manager Magnus Bredeli Tveiten with Statsbygg, the Norwegian government’s Directorate of Public Construction. Thus, it is critical that the vault have the technical capability to keep seeds cool and viable for a long period of time. The vast collection is intended as a hedge against disaster so that food production can be restarted anywhere on the planet should it be threatened by a regional or global catastrophe. With its capacity to hold up to 4.5 million seed samples, the vault will eventually house virtually every variety of almost every important food crop in the world. “It’s very satisfying to see the vault evolve from a bold concept to an impressive facility that has everything we need to protect crop biodiversity,” said Mr. ![]() The vault is to be officially opened 26 February 2008. Svalbard is now three days into the three-month “Polar Night” period when there is 24 hours of complete darkness.Įngineers working for the government of Norway, which is building the facility on the Svalbard archipelago, launched the cooling operation that, over the next two months, will bring the temperature of the sandstone rock surrounding the seed vault from its current - 5 degrees Celsius (23 & Fahrenheit), to -18 degrees Celsius (about 0 degrees Fahrenheit). Refrigeration units began pumping chilly air deep into an Arctic mountain cavern today, launching the innovative and critical “cooling down” phase of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in advance of its official opening early next year as a fail-safe repository of the world’s vital food crops. Terje Riis-Johansen, Norway’s Minister of Agriculture and Food.Īn online story from Norway Ministry of Agriculture and Food has more detail: “We really want this facility to inspire, to stand out as a highly visible monument to the often obscure but very important mission of conserving humanity’s agriculture heritage,” added Mr. “At these (frigid) temperatures, seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for up to 10,000 years.” “The seed vault is the perfect place for keeping seeds safe for centuries,” said Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Rome-based group, which has partnered with Norway and the Nordic Gene Bank on the establishment of the vault. The Global Crop Diversity Trust announced that it has completed construction of the doomsday vault and has started the two-month countdown to ready the facility to protect the world’s agricultural heritage against extinction and calamity. The vault currently stores more than 880,000 seed samples from nearly every country in the world, including food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea and sorghum from Africa and Asia.A high-tech vault built 400 feet inside permafrost and solid rock on the Arctic coast of Spitzbergen Island has started to cool down its sandstone chambers to zero degrees Farhenheit in preparation for an incredible mission:Īrchive up to 4.5 million seeds - the genetic source for all of the crops that feed humanity - in an ultimate fail-safe, blast-proof and climate-change immune chamber. "We have to listen to climate experts (and) we are prepared to do anything to protect the seed vault," she added. "It's not good to have unnecessary heat inside" if water is coming in and permafrost is melting, Hege Njaa Aschim said. No damage was caused to the seeds and they remain safe inside the vault at the required storage temperature of -18 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit).īut the vault's managers are now constructing a waterproof wall inside for additional protection, a Norwegian government spokeswoman told AFP, adding all heat sources would also be removed from inside the vault. The illustration of the Doomsday Vault /AFP Photoīut in October 2016, the warmest year on record, melting permafrost caused water to leak about 15 meters (49 feet) into the entrance of a 100-meter (about 328 feet) tunnel inside the vault.
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