Every country has its strategic stockpile for use in emergency. Preserving such a stockpile is a responsible and difficult job. A large number of problems arise with respect to keeping of foodstuffs. At present, about 1.5 thousand product names for the total sum of 5.2 billion roubles are kept in 150 strategic warehousing units of Russia.
Because foodstuffs are better preserved at low temperature, it is necessary to build cooled warehousing units which are in actual fact huge refrigerators. Building such a refrigerator costs much and using it costs even more because maintaining cold consumes enormous amounts of electric power.
Ideal would probably be a refrigerator capable of refrigerating without additional energy consumption. Russian scientists have long been looking with interest at the northern regions situated in the permfrost regions of the country. The storage life for food is usually determined by placing foodstuffs in a storage and examining their condition after a 30-year storage. A lucky circumstance helped researchers considerably shorten the test time. A food storage leaved by the Arctic explorer Toll over a century ago was found on Taimyr Peninsula. It turned out that cereal products as well as chocolate and tinned food did not lose flavor and were absolutely safe for human health.

It is planned to create natural refrigerators on Taimyr Peninsula. Building and using such refrigerators do not require any special thermally insulated storages, high-power electric stations and numerous operating personnel.
By the way, two thirds of the Russian territory are permafrost regions. 

 

More details: lenta.ru