Arctic ‘Doomsday’ Vault, Meant To Protect Against Disasters, Gets Flooded After Permafrost Melts

[Disir]

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, more commonly known as the "Doomsday Vault," houses more than 800,000 important crop seeds, as well as several tree samples, that humanity would need in order to survive should a global natural or man-made disaster occur.

The vault itself is located 400 feet under the Arctic permafrost and is strong enough to survive even a nuclear holocaust, but the Norwegian government, who is in charge of the vault, did not take into consideration that the ice surrounding the stronghold would melt and flood the facility, which is exactly what just happened.

None of seeds stored in the vault seem to have been compromised, but the people in charge of the vault learned a valuable lesson about challenging nature ... and making Titanic-like claims.
Arctic ‘Doomsday’ Vault, Meant To Protect Against Disasters, Gets Flooded After Permafrost Melts

The vault managers are now taking precautions, including major work to waterproof the 100m-long tunnel into the mountain and digging trenches into the mountainside to channel meltwater and rain away. They have also removed electrical equipment from the tunnel that produced some heat and installed pumps in the vault itself in case of a future flood.
Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

It seems rather odd that the tunnel wasn't waterproofed before.

 

[Old Rocks]

Engineers are notorious for overlooking details like that.

 

[waltky]

Melting Arctic Ice Jeopardizes Svalbard Global Seed Vault...

Norway to boost protection of Arctic seed vault from climate change
20 May 2017 - Norway is boosting the flood defences of its Global Seed Vault on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard after water entered the entrance tunnel last year.

The storage facility, deep inside a mountain, is designed to preserve the world's crops from future disasters. Unseasonably high temperatures last year caused the permafrost to melt, sending water into the access tunnel. No seeds were damaged but the facility is to have new waterproof walls in the tunnel and drainage ditches outside. The vault stores seeds from 5,000 crop species from around the world. Dried and frozen, it is believed they can be preserved for hundreds of years. Although most countries keep their own supplies of key varieties, the Global Seed Vault acts as a back-up. If a nation's seeds are lost as a result of a natural disaster or a man-made catastrophe, the specimens stored in the Arctic could be used to regenerate them.

Scientists at the facility describe the vault as the most important room in the world. Government spokeswoman Hege Njaa Aschim told the BBC that the reason the vault was built on Svalbard was because the permafrost was thought to be permanent. She said the problems emerged last October when the temperatures, instead of being -10C or colder, were hovering around 0C. "It was like a wet summer in Norway," she told the BBC. "Inside the mountain it's safe but the problems we have experienced are just outside and in the front of the tunnel, which is the entrance. So Yes, maybe something has changed in the permafrost, but we don't know, and that is what the climate researchers are looking into. We have to follow them carefully."

The seeds are carefully dried and frozen, preserving them for hundreds of years​

The new measures announced include drainage ditches on the mountainside to stop water from accumulating around the access tunnel. Waterproof walls inside the tunnel itself will provide extra protection for the vaults. In addition, Statsbygg, the agency that administers the vault, is to carry out a research and development project to monitor the permafrost on Svalbard.

Norway to boost protection of Arctic seed vault from climate change - BBC News

See also:

'Doomsday' Seed Vault Entrance Repaired After Arctic Ice Thaw
May 20, 2017 — Norway is repairing the entrance of a "doomsday" seed vault on an Arctic island after an unexpected thaw of permafrost let water into a building meant as a deep freeze to safeguard the world's food supplies.

The water, limited to the 15-meter (50-foot) entrance hall in the melt late last year, had no impact on millions of seeds of crops including rice, maize, potatoes and wheat that are stored more than 110 meters inside the mountainside. Still, water was an unexpected problem for the vault on the Svalbard archipelago, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the North Pole. It seeks to safeguard seeds from cataclysms such as nuclear war or disease in natural permafrost. "Svalbard Global Seed Vault is facing technical improvements in connection with water intrusion," Norwegian state construction group Statsbygg, which built the vault that opened in 2008, said in a statement on Saturday. "The seeds in the seed vault have never been threatened."

The entrance to the international gene bank Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) is pictured outside Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen, Norway[/img]

Spokeswoman Hege Njaa Aschim said Statsbygg had removed electrical equipment from the entrance -- a source of heat -- and was building waterproof walls inside and ditches outside to channel away any water. The number of visitors would be reduced to limit human body heat, she said. Some of the water that flowed in re-froze and had to be chipped out by workers from the local fire service. An underlying problem was that permafrost around the entrance of the vault, which had thawed from the heat of construction a decade ago, has not re-frozen as predicted by scientists, Aschim said.

One of the newly arrived boxes containing seeds from Japan and the U.S. is carried into the international gene bank Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) outside Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen, Norway​

Temperatures in the Arctic region have been rising at twice the global average in a quickening trend that climate scientists blame on man-made greenhouse gases. Svalbard has sometimes had rain even in the depths of winter when the sun does not rise. "There's no doubt that the permafrost will remain in the mountainside where the seeds are," said Marie Haga, head of the Bonn-based Crop Trust that works with Norway to run the vault. "But we had not expected it to melt around the tunnel." Haga said the trust had so far raised just over $200 million toward an $850 million endowment fund to help safeguard seeds in collections around the globe. "That is an extremely cheap insurance policy for the world," she said.

'Doomsday' Seed Vault Entrance Repaired After Arctic Ice Thaw​

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[Marion Morrison]

Kind of like the "hurricane proof" hurricane center that Hurricane Andrew leveled.