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Multi-Million Dollar Upgrade Planned To Secure 'Failsafe' Arctic Seed Vault (theguardian.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the rope-and-duct-tape dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Global Seed Vault, built in the Arctic as an impregnable deep freeze for the world's most precious food seeds, is to undergo a multi-million dollar upgrade after water from melting permafrost flooded its access tunnel. No seeds were damaged but the incident undermined the original belief that the vault would be a "failsafe" facility, securing the world's food supply forever. Now the Norwegian government, which owns the vault, has committed $4.4 million to improvements. [T]he vault's planners had not anticipated the extreme warm weather seen recently at the end of the world's hottest ever recorded year. "The background to the technical improvements is that the permafrost has not established itself as planned," said a government statement. "A group will investigate potential solutions to counter the increased water volumes resulting from a wetter and warmer climate on Svalbard." One option could be to replace the access tunnel, which slopes down towards the vault's main door, carrying water towards the seeds. A new upward sloping tunnel would take water away from the vault. An initial $1.6 million will be spent on investigating ways to improve the access tunnel, with the group's conclusions delivered in spring 2018. "They are going in with an open mind to find a good solution," said Aschim. "$4.4 million is for all the improvements we are doing now." The vault cost $9 million to build.

53 comments

  1. Failsafe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "impregnable deep freeze" ... "[T]he vault's planners had not anticipated the extreme warm weather seen recently..."

    Feels like a bit of an design oversight for a "failsafe" to only work if everything is going fine.

    1. Re:Failsafe? by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Or a failure of "Titanic" proportions?

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    2. Re:Failsafe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Impregnable", yet full of random people's seed.

  2. Forget the artic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Permafrost obviously cannot be relied on now, so the need to keep it in the artic circle can be dispensed with. You might as well split the stocks into batches and secure them in several locations across the world. Since they're refrigerated, those places don't need to be cold even.

    IMHO, you keep a lot of seeds, the climate shifts, those seeds are for plants that are no longer useful because the world has shifted. A new disease evolves, it wipes out plant stock, your seeds are not immune. They're not going to save us, just a useful source of diverse seed DNA for some future repairs.

    1. Re:Forget the artic by Mascot · · Score: 1

      Seed vaults already exist all over the world, the Svalbard vault is the backup in case they are lost. Hyperbolically speaking "due to global disaster". More realistically speaking, when one of the other vaults get wiped out from fire, war, floods etc.

      In addition, it's intended to be self sustained. It's locally powered, and in the event of refrigeration failure permafrost still maintains below freezing temperatures (though not deep freeze, obviously), presumably ensuring seeds are viable for a long time after a global disaster.

    2. Re:Forget the artic by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      In addition, it's intended to be self sustained. It's locally powered, and in the event of refrigeration failure permafrost still maintains below freezing temperatures

      Guess what? Permafrost isn't permanent any more. It's melting all over the place. Any design which is supposed to be long-term and which counts on permafrost remaining frozen is shit.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Forget the artic by Mascot · · Score: 1

      Guess what? It doesn't rely on it. The permafrost isn't anywhere near as cold as the desired storage temperature of -18 C. It is, however, nice to have, both as an energy saver and to slow the heating process in case of refrigeration failure (something being underground helps with regardless). And, until such time as it should indeed vanish, it'll keep things at -3 even in the event of extended cooling failure.

    4. Re: Forget the artic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Guess what? Permafrost isn't permanent any more. It's melting all over the place. Any design which is supposed to be long-term and which counts on permafrost remaining frozen is shit.

      Go home Drinkypoo, you're drunk.

  3. Sad to see them make this about politics... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    instead of science.

    1. Re: Sad to see them make this about politics... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. They're just deflecting from their poor engineering.

  4. Wait a few more years by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

    and those seeds will make a very enjoyable jungle!

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  5. Those who ignore history are doomed to build in a by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    I find it absurd they did not take into account melting permafrost, current temperatures are not even close to historical highs we have been able to determine. It was always going to get warmer than this at some point, how could they not account for any melting?

    I wish instead they had build somewhere a bit less transient and more geologically stable.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. The original design works as intended by Troed · · Score: 3, Informative

    “We did this calculation; if all the ice in the world melted—Greenland, Arctic, Antarctic, everything—and then we had the world's largest recorded tsunami right in front of the seed vault. So, very high sea levels and the worlds largest Tsunami. What would happen to the seed vault?” Fowler says. “We found that the seed vault was somewhere between a five and seven story building above that point. It might not help the road leading up to the seed vault, but the seeds themselves would be ok."

    http://www.popsci.com/seed-vau...

    The designers knew the difference between "hottest year ever _recorded_" (that is, within the last few hundred years) and the hottest years _ever_. The arctic has been a lot warmer than now during _this_ interglacial (source: Marcott et.al 2013) - not to mention the previous interglacial, the Eemian.

    --
    it's in my head
  7. How to save 1.6 mllion dollars.. by thesupraman · · Score: 2

    As I mentioned last time this little gem came up..

    Just dig out the first 20 meters of the tunnel to slope downwards?
    The ceiling doesnt matter, it can slope up, there may be very minor water trickle in that way.
    However, having a floor sloping upwards (from the interior end..) was always pure incompetence.
    Easily rectified - would probably take a good solid week to achieve with no major impact on the sites operations.

    And yet, someone, they need to spend 1.6 million to 'investigate' this?
    I guess its a nice tasting gravy train...

    As can be seen from this image of the site:
    http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2009/seed_vault/seed_vault_01.jpg
    They may need to compromise the pretty look of the entrance a little, but is that what really matters?

    1. Re:How to save 1.6 mllion dollars.. by jandersen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It is both sad and embarrassing to see how all the anti-environmentalists and the arm-chair philosophers join forces (again) to start kicking, when their perceived enemy of the moment is apparently lying down. Maybe you can elaborate on your own expertise in major construction work in the high Arctic? I think it is pretty likely that whoever built this site were qualified for the job, so I will go with their opinion on the matter over yours any time of the day. Permafrost melting isn't exactly a new, surprising phenomenon, and both the Russians, the Norwegians and the Canadians are aware of the issues and will no doubt have taken that into the totality of their considerations.

      The world's seed banks are of huge importance. Not only are we losing bio-diversity very fast at the moment, but we are also losing genetic variety in all our food crops, which makes us more vulnerable to emerging plant-diseases, pests etc. As just one example, take the banana: nearly all the bananas we see in supermarkets come from the Cavendish variety, which is now under serious threat from a fungus disease. And calling it a variety is probably a bit of a misnomer - Cavendish bananas don't produce seed (or only very rarely), and all the plants are clones of just 1 original plant, so they are genetically identical. Whatever kills one is likely to kill all. The seed banks are there to preserve the genetic variety of food crops, to protect us against something like this happening to wheat, rice, maize, potatoes etc etc. Even if you are meat eater, you don't want to loose the crops that feed the cattle that feed you.

      And we are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that we can ill afford to lose the natural eco-systems, since much or even most of what we grow for crops, depends on them being at least somewhat intact; so the seed vaults' work in preserving wild plant species is also very important. This is definitely not just a bunch of tree-huggers wasting tax-payers' money. If you are looking for waste of tax-payers' money, look no further than to propping up an unnecessary coal industry or giving tax breaks to the wealthy.

    2. Re: How to save 1.6 mllion dollars.. by Entrope · · Score: 2

      Which is trickier: Building a vault to protect against global warming, and not having its entryway freeze when the surface gets a little warmer, or re-engineering the global economy to reduce GHG emissions without starving more people?

      Excuse us skeptics if we think the second one is harder, and that blinding incompetence in the first suggests that the people in question might not do any better on the second.

    3. Re:How to save 1.6 mllion dollars.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe you can elaborate on your own expertise in major construction work in the high Arctic?

      I have none but I'm at least smart enough to know that an entrance tunnel that slopes downwards is not a good way to keep water that might leak in through the door from getting to the rooms at other end of the tunnel. Hell only Dwarf Fortress level thinking is required for that one.

    4. Re:How to save 1.6 mllion dollars.. by jandersen · · Score: 1

      Any complex construction project needs to take into account a large number of requirements and parameters; some of these may be in conflict with each other, so the engineers have to make compromises based on the best of their knowledge. In some cases the simply have to guess, because they still don't have strong enough data. It is presumptious, to say the least, to pass judgment without knowing more about how they made their design choices.

      Pure guesswork, but I can imagine a reason why it would make sense to construct a tunnel that slopes downward: cold air tends to run down a slope, so it would be a way to preserve the low temperatures, something that is significant when your energy supplies have to reach you from rather far away. They will have weighed that up against the risk of the permafrost melting and estimated that the risk was relatively low; the arctic has been warming up a lot faster than even the pessimists though was likely back then.

    5. Re: How to save 1.6 mllion dollars.. by KGIII · · Score: 1

      It's funny. You sit here telling people to not pass judgement while you, yourself, have judged them to be capable. Curiously, you've judged this and made some assumptions about competency when, frankly, evidence suggests a lack of competency.

      I suspect there's some bias. Call it a hunch.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    6. Re: How to save 1.6 mllion dollars.. by jandersen · · Score: 1

      You sit here telling people to not pass judgement while you, yourself, have judged them to be capable. Curiously, you've judged this and made some assumptions about competency when, frankly, evidence suggests a lack of competency.

      Not really - I reserve judgment until I know more, but until then I am willing to give them the benefit of doubt. After all, we give even murderers a chance to defend themselves before judging them. I think I have explained in sufficient detail why I think it is more likely than not, that they have shown reasonable competence, and I won't invest any more effort into the subject. I suspect you won't be convinced by any arguments, and I frankly don't really care.

    7. Re: How to save 1.6 mllion dollars.. by KGIII · · Score: 1

      You're not very observant, are you? It's okay.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    8. Re:How to save 1.6 mllion dollars.. by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Potato. Native to Chile, Peru, Bolivia, with a wide genetic variety finely tuned to local conditions.
      Wheat. A grass, with wide natural diversity expanded by human efforts.
      Rice. A grass seed, substantially improved in diversity and nutritional value by human development.
      Maize (corn). There are a large number of varieties of corn organized into at least 6 categories by their economic function. Corn is also increasing its genetic variety due to human research into better strains.

      While seed banks are a nice idea, relying on them would result in a great reduction in genetic diversity, because not all varieties withstand the conditions of seed banks equally well.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  8. It's unfortunate that this happened... by mapkinase · · Score: 1

    ... to such a poor underdevloped country like Norway.

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  9. Flooded basement by Powercntrl · · Score: 1

    Couldn't they just do the same things people up north do to keep the snow from flooding their basements, install a pump? Maybe a few pumps, so there's some redundancy in the system?

    But no... they need a multi-million dollar new tunnel. And here in the good old USA, the city won't even fix the fricken potholes.

    --

    ---
    DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
    1. Re:Flooded basement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Couldn't they just do the same things people up north do to keep the snow from flooding their basements, install a pump? Maybe a few pumps, so there's some redundancy in the system?

      But no... they need a multi-million dollar new tunnel. And here in the good old USA, the city won't even fix the fricken potholes.

      Well they still have to fix all the damage Team Scorpion(TM) did when they were there.. Seems to be a pattern with them, doing all those MacGuyver fixes they totally destroyed the place!

    2. Re:Flooded basement by Kiuas · · Score: 1

      Couldn't they just do the same things people up north do to keep the snow from flooding their basements, install a pump? Maybe a few pumps, so there's some redundancy in the system?

      They're using pumps as redundancy now, but that's really not really how the vault is supposed to work. It's intended to survive without human maintenance in case of global catastrophes. Quoting the article:

      “The whole reason for the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard in the permafrost area is it has to be self sufficient, in case of a really big disaster in the world,” he said. “[If] all the humans in the lower part of the world are destroyed, perhaps a 100 years later the survivors can come here and find the seeds. The seeds will be OK as they are in the [deep] permafrost layer. But as it is today, the whole entrance will be filled up with water and this will freeze and it will be blocked after a few years, so it will not be possible to get into the seed vault. There will be a big iceberg in the tunnel.”

      “The solution is easy and I give it for free,” Kristofferson said. “Make a new access tunnel going upward so the water can run out, not into the seed bank. It is not very hard, but it will cost a lot of money.”

      --
      "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
  10. Like my nearest neighbor does by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He's been on the TV. One of the doomsday freaks. Like I tell him every time I see him buying stuff he'll never use, if it happens, you'll be dead soon enough. He laughs. Crazily laughs. He still has Trump signs out.

  11. Slight disadvantage by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A new upward sloping tunnel would take water away from the vault.

    The downside is that you have to enter from Australia.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:Slight disadvantage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Downside? Surely you mean upside.

    2. Re: Slight disadvantage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow...
      A tunnel connecting the two best countries on Earth !

      My brain can't handle that level of awesome...

  12. Another backup site towards north by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In computers we call secondary backup in case primary backup fails. Instead of spending $4.5m, Spend that to create a suitable secondary site further north from lessons learnt from primary site.

  13. British Civil Nuclear Contractor by Togden · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They should have given the design contract to a British Civil Nuclear Engineering firm. I've worked for a few of them, every decision is made wearing tinfoil hats, it's pretty bad. I've seen designs that would work safely regardless of any nearly impossible weather conditions, they then added additional independent safety features so that it would work for something several times worse. I can't see how they would have missed this particular hiccup, it would have had the ramp falling away from the door, a pumped drainage solution as backup and nearby emergency submersible vessels to gain entry after the ice caps have melted.

    1. Re:British Civil Nuclear Contractor by tantrum · · Score: 1

      maybe they thought that i the permafrost thawed in that area, the human population on this planet was about to be fucked anyways - so that there would not really be that relevant to keep some seeds :p

    2. Re:British Civil Nuclear Contractor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      maybe they thought that i the permafrost thawed in that area, the human population on this planet was about to be fucked anyways - so that there would not really be that relevant to keep some seeds :p

      Someone who thought like that would NOT be the right person to be planning a Survival Shelter of any kind...

  14. Re:Those who ignore history are doomed to build in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The very definition of permafrost is that it is continuously frozen. I blame Trump.

  15. Re:Those who ignore history are doomed to build in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wish instead they had build somewhere a bit less transient and more geologically stable.

    And miss out on the regular "near disaster" to get another multi-million bonus? That would be bad business.

  16. Re:Those who ignore history are doomed to build in by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

    Yeah: it debunks the whole idea of global warming being some massive conspiracy doesn't it - or do the time travelling zombies behind the global warming myth forget to send these guys a memo?

  17. "securing the world's food supply forever."? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    That is NOT why it was build and nobody believes it can do that. The reason it was built was to make sure the biodiversity wasn't lost is a Monsanto single strain catastrophe. This place doe NOT have enough seeds to work as out seed for the entire planet.

  18. Re:Those who ignore history are doomed to build in by Mascot · · Score: 1

    What do you mean? The location was picked _because_ it is geologically stable. There's no tectonic activity, it's at high enough altitude to remain above sea level even if the ice caps should fully melt, and permafrost safeguards against refrigeration failure.

    The recent flooding of the entrance was caused by surface melt, not thawing of the subterranean permafrost surrounding the vault itself. Once the water entered the tunnel and flowed deeper, it froze. Even if it should heat up enough up there to kill off the permafrost entirely, the subterranean nature of the vault still eases the refrigeration needs.

  19. KHHHHHAAAHNNNN! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is who Trump would blame!

      catchup: stupid

  20. Re: Those who ignore history are doomed to build i by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Trump will just build a yuge great wall around the vault to protect the seeds from the melting permafrost. The Mexicants won't pay for it but the Mexicans will.

  21. Here's an idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Build it on top of a fucking mountain.

    1. Re:Here's an idea by ledow · · Score: 1

      You mean the things that collapse and move all the time, like the shelf on Everest that disappeared earlier this year, and which are incredibly difficult for staff to access and get parts / repairs done up there?

      Try somewhere geologically stable instead, and if you put it underground, make sure the water has a path that doesn't lead straight to your main archive. We've been mining and building cellars for millennia on city-wide scales, and always managed to work it out before.

  22. SO STUPID! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    What kind of quarterly gains are they going to get from a seed vault? How stupid are they?! When large bands of the Earth turn to deserts from climate change it will be money that everyone wants! ;)

    (nb4 "*whoosh!*" comment response)

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  23. Re:Those who ignore history are doomed to build in by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    They did take into account higher temperatures. With higher temperatures comes less buildup of permafrost which is less likely to melt. What they didn't take into account was a few uncharacteristically warm days amid a time of thick snow and frost causing a sudden melt.

    Weather != climate.

  24. It is hopeless by Sqreater · · Score: 0

    You cannot defeat entropy in the long run. All victories are temporary and require effort.

    --
    E Proelio Veritas.
  25. Hotest year ever? Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    at the end of the world's hottest ever recorded year

    The absurdity of that statement is just astounding, how quickly we forget that the earth use to be covered in blistering hot magma.

    1. Re:Hotest year ever? Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      their fine print is probably the "recorded" qualifier

  26. Let me get this straight ... by NoSalt · · Score: 1

    They build the seed vault to protect the Earth's plants in the event of an environmental disaster ... like climate change.

    However, the vault, itself, isn't immune to the effects of said climate change.

    Somebody wasn't thinking.