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Comment by varjag | Hacker News Reader

Cooling takes energy, which is the first thing to go in a doomsday scenario. But you get it very much for free 1300km beyond the Arctic Circle.

> Isn't this the mine complex that is flooding due to melting permafrost?

The entrance hall was flooded in 2017, the seeds were not endangered. The entrance has been upgraded since.

> It seems insane putting this stuff in an icy hole in the ground on a warming planet.

As it is customary, all the concerns you come up with in first 5 minutes after reading an article on the Internet were likely considered by people working on the project.

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> As it is customary, all the concerns you come up with in first 5 minutes after reading an article on the Internet were likely considered by people working on the project.

This is beautiful.

Apparently they were not considered if they had to do major retrofitting.

> In October 2016, the Seed Vault experienced an unusually large degree of water intrusion due to higher than average temperatures and heavy rainfall. While it is common for some water to seep into the Seed Vault's 100 m (328 ft) entrance tunnel during the warmer spring months, in this case the water encroached 15 m (49 ft) into the tunnel before freezing.[21] The Seed Vault was designed for water intrusion and as such the seeds were not at risk.[21] As a result, however, the Norwegian public works agency Statsbygg completed improvements to the tunnel in 2019 to prevent any such intrusion in the future, including waterproofing the tunnel walls, removing heat sources from the tunnel, and digging exterior drainage ditches.[22][23]

Your own quote says it was designed for water intrusion, and so the seeds were not at risk. Seems like they'd accounted for actual conditions well enough, but decided to take addition precautions because they could.

They should put vaults in Antarctica though.

Much safer, and the mainland Antarctica will not likely melt.

Norway however only has territory in the Arctic (which is an island that is not going to melt as well), and there were not any other takers.

Norway claims territory in Antarctica too, but these claims are only recognized by a handful of states who also claim land in Antarctica...

The lack of recognition doesn't really preclude construction that can be justified as for scientific purposes, though.

Convenience is more important.

Norway has claim to a huge area of Antarctica. Queen Maud's land. Subject to the Antarctic Treaty and also recognized by UK, France Australia, etc.

The odds of the Arctic becoming ice-free, including continental ice, are really disturbing. See the reports on the probable collapse of the Greenland ice.

Whereas there are no such concern in Antarctica, only its ice shelves are threatened.

Antarctica's ice is continually sliding into the sea. Anything embedded in it will eventually get dumped on the sea-floor as it melts out the bottom of an ice sheet. We have already lost things that were left lying around there.

There are mountains in Antarctica, ice-free spots that can be the location of vaults.

The point of "ice not melting" is not to use ice, but to show you that the land will keep cool even in summer.

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