Construction of the tunnelled vault in the Norwegian Arctic to store seed samples from around the world has been completed. The stocked caverns of the food and biodiversity security facility were set to be officially opened late February.
Drill and blast excavation of the “Doomsday Vault” complex near Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen, the main island in the Svalbard archipelago, started in April 2007. A 120m long main access tunnel was driven from which an access gallery was opened up left and right, and then three storage caverns were excavated.
The bored distance from the portal to the rear of the caverns is almost 146m. Each cavern is 9.5m-10m wide by 6m high and approximately 27m long. Geology at the site comprises only sandstone. The air inside the complex was chilled over two months to lower the rock temperature within a 10m zone from -5° C to -18° C.
The subterranean seed store will be marked by a highly visible reinforced concrete access portal that houses artwork, including lights, that change with the length of Arctic day. For security, a series of gates are fitted to the portal structure.
The project was directed by Statsbygg, the Norwegian government’s Directorate of Public Construction and Property. The government invested US$9M to build the scheme, which will be run by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. The vault was built approximately 130m above current sea level to outlast any changes brought by climate change problems.
An artist’s impression of the Norwegian Arctic seed store
