Seed Vault for the Whole Wide World

Do you remember me mentioning the seed vault that´s being installed in the old Mine 3 here in Longyearbyen? I thought it´d be finished in September (because that´s what it said on the huge board next to the site), but it appears that it wasn´t finished until today. And as the Grand Opening with all the Big Shots will be on February 26th next year, I suppose even now it´s not quite ready. But us ordinary people living here were invited to come and have a peek at it today.

A crowd of ordinary, but curious people.


Thomas´first visit to a mine. Except it doesn´t look much like a mine anymore.


The construction streches about 150m into the mountain.

Inside one of the halls (there are 3 of them) - filled with empty shelves.


It´ll take about 20 years to fill one hall - I can´t remember exactly how many millions of seeds each will contain, but it´s quite a few.

The vault will be closed tomorrow, so the temperature can be lowered, slowly, until it reaches a stable -18C (now it´s about -5C) sometime in January. This temperature will slowly spread into the surrounding rock, so eventually the whole mountainside will be freezing cold. Which is a good thing, of course, as that guarantees freezing conditions no matter what happens (because of the permafrost, the temperature will never rise above -5C).

There´s so much more I could say about this project - but I´ll stop here, and point you towards some links instead, like here, here - and here. And loads of other places. By the way, the illustration at the top was nicked from this link.

The next you´ll hear about the seed vault from me will probably be in the end of February next year - there are some vague rumours that Leonardo diCaprio and Bill Gates (Gates has donated a huge sum to the project) will come to the opening - I wouldn´t miss it for the world!




And now, more mouse-news:

Yesterday, out walking in the dark, along the road towards Adventdalen, in the cold snow ... a little furry creature crossed the road right in front of us and scurried on across the field!

I´ve no idea whether this was an Østmarkmus, but I suppose it was. I´ve heard that they live in the insulation along the pipes - it seems there are more of them than I thought.

So next time I spot a mouse, I promise I won´t mention it.