To bring you all up to speed from yesterday - water in the access tunnel, global warming, we're all gonna die. Now, on with the article.A failure at a fail-safe vault. The irony is delicious, but that’s not the whole story.
On its website, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is described by Crop Trust—the nonprofit that runs it—as “a fail-safe seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time—and the challenge of natural or man-made disasters.” It holds backups of seeds from seed banks around the world, with the goal of preserving a legacy of crop diversity in the face of changing climate, natural disasters, and human conflicts. It’s operated for a little over nine years.
Then, on Friday, news spread that water from melting permafrost had gushed into the tunnel and frozen, making the floor slick with ice but not impacting the seeds. It would seem the fail-safe had failed. Or had it?
“Flooding is probably not quite the right word to use in this case,” says Cary Fowler, who helped create the seed vault. “In my experience, there’s been water intrusion at the front of the tunnel every single year.”
Fowler wasn't at the seed vault this year when the flooding (or 'flooding') in question took place, but has extensive knowledge of the project and facilities. He explains that a 100 meter long tunnel leads into the heart of the mountain where the seed vault is stored, running at a slight downward slope. At the base of the slope are two pumping stations to remove any water that might get in. Then there's a slight uphill section before you reach the doors to the vault itself, where the seeds are kept at 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit or -18 Celsius.
“The tunnel was never meant to be water tight at the front, because we didn’t think we would need that,” Fowler says. “What happens is, in the summer the permafrost melts, and some water comes in, and when it comes in, it freezes. It doesn’t typically go very far.”
Permafrost is a frozen layer of Earth that's meant to be permanent, but it can be damaged if temperatures rise, or if humans dig into it and create more ways for heat to enter. In this case, the area has been going through a record heatwave, and the construction of the tunnel nine years ago dug into the permafrost and made it more vulnerable. The combination means that near the entrance to the tunnel—where the overlying soil is thinner—meltwater can indeed make its way through. That’s why the designers installed the pumps in the first place.
seed vault tunnel
More:
http://www.popsci.com/seed-vault-flooding
