"The tunnel was never meant to be watertight at the front, because we didn't think we would need that," Fowler told Popular Science. Though he was not at the vault to observe the incident, he noted that "flooding" was probably not the most accurate word to describe what happened. "In my experience, there's been water intrusion at the front of the tunnel every single year," Cary Fowler, an American agriculturist who helped create the seed vault, told the magazine. However, Crop Trust on Saturday twice retweeted a Popular Science article that seemed to indicate the situation was not as dire as had been initially reported. Representatives for Statsbygg and Crop Trust did not immediately respond to an emailed interview request Saturday. The seeds are safe and sound /urknLNFkJI- The Crop Trust May 20, 2017So which is it? Is the fact that some water seeped into a "fail-safe" vault no big deal? Or are we as a human race doomed to die, starving and cropless, in the event of global catastrophe? In our news section: statement on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. "The seeds are safe and sound," tweeted the Crop Trust, an international nonprofit group that helped establish the Svalbard vault in 2008. Finally, to be "better safe than sorry," Statsbygg says researchers will closely follow the development of permafrost on Svalbard. In addition, waterproof walls would be erected inside the tunnel. "The seeds in the seed vault have never been threatened and will remain safe during implementation of the measures," the statement read.Īccording to the statement, the proposed improvements include removing heat sources, such as a transformer station, from the tunnel, as well as constructing drainage ditches on the mountainside to prevent meltwater from accumulating around the entrance. Yes, there had been "season-dependent intrusion of water" into the outer part of the seed vault, but the group was now taking precautionary measures to make improvements to the outer tunnel to prevent future occurrences. An ice covered entrance door to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.On Saturday, Statsbygg seemed to walk back some of those comments in a statement published on the seed vault's website.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |