Crop repository: Snow and high winds blast the entrance to the finished doomsday vault, which is buried 130 m down in an Arctic mountain.
Credit: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust
SYDNEY: Capable of withstanding everything from catastrophic climate change to nuclear attack, a new frozen seed vault – aptly nicknamed the 'doomsday vault' – has officially opened in Norway.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is dug deep into the frozen rock of an Arctic mountain. It is capable of storing up to 4.5 million seed samples, some 2.5 billion individual seeds in total, for hundreds if not thousands of years. The repository will eventually represent the most comprehensive and diverse collection of viable crop seeds in the world.
"[It is] a facility capable of protecting what are not just seeds, but the fundamental building blocks of human civilisation," said Norway's Prime Minister, Jens Stotenberg at a launch ceremony on Tuesday.
Protecting civilisation
The opening of the vault "marks a historic turning point in safeguarding the world's crop diversity," said Cary Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a foundation based in Rome, Italy, that has overseen the creation of the vault.
"Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource for addressing climate change, water and energy supply constraints, and for meeting the food needs of a growing population," he said.
Though there are around 1,400 seed banks currently in existence, the doomsday vault is unique in its design as a failsafe 'back-up' resource for other facilities across the world. Traditional seed banks are vulnerable to a range of large-scale events, including natural disaster and war, and face potentially damaging problems such as equipment failure.
The doomsday vault, on the other hand, will remain immune to these challenges. At a depth of 130 m inside its host mountain, the vault is impenetrable to any missile known today, and is designed to withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters.
Worst-case global warming
Though the sandstone the vault is housed in sat naturally at -5°C, a period of mechanical cooling has reduced this temperature to -18°C. This low starting point means that not only can the vault be cooled more efficiently by equipment within, but it also means that, in the event of power or equipment failure, the seeds will remain naturally frozen in a viable state.
Even in the worst predicted case scenarios of global warming, the low temperature of the vault should remain constant for up to 200 years.
With such security and stability the doomsday vault is an important resource – whether it is used to protect against incremental losses in crop diversity today, or to re-start agriculture in a post-apocalyptic future.
