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'Doomsday vault' ready to open
25/02/2008 22:08 - (SA)
Longyearbyen, Norway - A "doomsday" vault built to withstand an earthquake or nuclear strike was ready to open deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain, where it will protect millions of seeds from man-made and natural disasters.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was to be officially inaugurated on Tuesday, less than a year after crews started drilling in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, about 1 000 kilometres from the North Pole.
The vault, which Norway built at a cost of about 50 million kroner, has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples from around the globe, shielding them from climate change, wars, natural disasters and other threats.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg were to attend the opening ceremony, 130 meters deep into the Plataaberget mountain.
The vault is designed to be a "fail-safe backup" for the other 1 400 seed banks in the world, in case they are hit by disasters, said Cary Fowler, executive director of project partner the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
Seeds could last 1 000 years
"So much of the value of Svalbard is that it is so far away from the dangers," Fowler told The Associated Press during a tour of the vault on Monday.
Construction started in April last year. Norway owns the vault but countries sending seeds will own the material they deposit.
From the outside, only the entryway is visible. It resembles an elongated concrete tower capped by a glass artwork depicting frozen ice crystals.
Ahead of the opening, the entrance was decorated with igloo-like cubes of snow, and an ice sculpture of a polar bear.
A long, steel-lined tunnel leads to three separate chambers for storing seeds, each reached through a frost-covered metal door.
Each of the 10-by-27m vaults has blue and orange metal shelves that can hold 1.5 million sample packages - foil containers with 500 seeds each.
Positive reactions
The frozen mountain has been chilled further by giant air conditioning units to bring the temperature down to -18 Celsius. Many seeds could last 1 000 years at that temperature, Fowler said.
Reactions from around the world have been mostly positive, but the world spotlight brought by the seed bank has met a cool reception from some locals who treasure the isolation of the Arctic archipelago.
"We like to be here a little bit for ourselves," said Kai Tredal, 42, one of the roughly 2 000 residents of Svalbard's main town of Longyearbyen.
The vault is designed to withstand earthquakes - successfully tested by a 6.2-maginture earthquake at Svalbard last week - and even a direct nuclear strike, said construction leader Magnus Bredeli-Tveiten.
Fowler added that even if power systems failed, the permafrost around the vault would help keep the seeds "cold for 200 years even in the worst case climate scenario."
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