Camp Century


Camp Century was an Arctic United States military scientific research base in Greenland. It is situated 150 miles east of Thule Air Base. It was built and publicly promoted as being a base for scientific research, but decades later the facts were discovered that in actuality that was the cover story for Project Iceworm to install sites for launching nuclear missiles in Greenland, a project which was kept secret even from the host nation of Denmark. Powered by a nuclear reactor, the camp operated from 1959 until 1967. The base consisted of 21 tunnels with a total length of. Project Iceworm was aborted after it was realized that the ice sheet was not as stable as originally assessed, and that the missile basing concept would not be feasible. So Camp Century was abandoned, and the reactor removed. However, many tons of toxic waste remain buried under the ice and continue to be an environmental concern, particularly with the general trend of ice mass decreasing and the possibility that these materials will eventually get exposed to the surface.

History

Construction on the camp and the sub-glacial nuclear reactor began without explicit permission from the government of Denmark, leading to a political dilemma for Prime Minister H. C. Hansen.

Residual environmental hazards

In 2016, a group of scientists evaluated the environmental impact and estimated that due to changing weather patterns over the next few decades, melt water could release the nuclear waste, 200,000 liters of chemical waste and 24 million liters of untreated sewage into the environment. However, as of 2016, neither the US nor Denmark had taken responsibility for the clean-up.

Scientific research

samples from Camp Century were used to create stable isotopes analyses used to develop climate models. Analysis of soil contained in the samples suggests that the site was ice-free as recently as 400,000 years ago, indicating a much reduced Greenland ice sheet and therefore much higher sea levels.