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Multi-Million Dollar Upgrade Planned To Secure 'Failsafe' Arctic Seed Vault (theguardian.com)
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.
The downside is that you have to enter from Australia.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.