Norway’s “doomsday vault” will official be opened on Tuesday, nearly a year after building began. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault will hold millions of seeds around the world and protect them from natural disasters or a nuclear strike.
The vault is located in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, which is around 620 miles from the North Pole and 300 miles north of the Norwegian mainland. The $9.1 million project began in April 2007. It is designed as a “fail-safe backup” as other seed vaults, like ones in Iraq and the Philippines, have been destroyed by wars or natural disasters.
“So much of the value of Svalbard is that it is so far away from the dangers,” the executive director of the project Cary Fowler told the Associated Press.
The seed vault is owned by Norway but will allow other countries to deposit seeds. It can hold $4.5 million seed samples. The building is kept at minus 0.4 Fahrenheit 425 feet into the Plataaberget Mountain. It maintains that temperature with the help of the frozen mountain and an air conditioning system. Seeds could last up to 1,000 when kept at that temperature.
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