Deep within the ice of Greenland lies a US military secret hidden since the 1960s. But NASA has managed to uncover the buried relic of the Cold War.
Built in 1959 by the US Army Corps of Engineers, Camp Century was built on the ice of Greenland. At the heart of the facility was the PM-2A portable nuclear reactor, which powered a “city under the ice” that included housing for 200 soldiers, a theater, gymnasium, post office, library, and even a chapel.
The Camp Century layout – click to enlarge
The camp was built ostensibly as a scientific outpost, but its real purpose was to Project Iceworm, the US military's plan to deploy hundreds of cold-hardened Minuteman nuclear missiles to strike the Soviet Union.
This never materialized, leading to the abandonment of Camp Century in 1967, and the facility was buried under accumulated ice and snow. Camp Century is now believed to be at least 30 meters below the surface.
Camp Century was part of Project Iceworm, which attempted to build thousands of miles of tunnels to deploy 600 missiles, failed because the Greenland ice sheet was too unstable to support long-term underground facilities.
All that remains today of the facility is a project led by the governments of Greenland and Denmark to monitor the site from a small outpost above the camp, which is 150 miles inland from the U.S.'s Pituffik space base. US Force, formerly known as Thule Air Force Base, which managed the construction of Camp Century.
The only real look at Camp Century over the decades was via ground-penetrating radar that provided, at best, a two-dimensional confirmation that the tunnels, along with everything they contained, are still down there.
Everything changed in April, like NASA reported this week, when the space agency's Earth Observatory spotted an anomaly while surveying ice sheets using an aircraft equipped with NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR).
Camp Century, shown as a green blob, in an image taken by Chad Greene during the mapping flight – click to enlarge
UAVSAR, which in this case the scientists were using on a Gulfstream III aircraft, has the advantage of firing radar signals directly down and at an angle, meaning it is able to produce maps with a higher resolution than standard ground penetrating radar that only aims straight down.
Why Camp Century still matters
Because of the imperfections in the image from Camp Century's UAVSAR, the image raises new questions and curiosity, and contains no useful scientific data, NASA said. However, understanding more about the condition of Camp Century, its depth below the ice and the condition of the frozen water above it, is critical because it contains a lot of nuclear, biological and chemical waste that the Army wasn't too concerned about. at that time.
If current climate change trends continue at their current rates, NASA researchers found in 2011, that all the harmful materials stored under the ice at Camp Century could leak into the surrounding ice long before the surface begins to melt.
NASA's projected ice loss around Camp Century by 2090 – click to enlarge
According to NASA's estimate, there are about 53.000 gallons of diesel fuel, 6,3 million gallons of sewage from the camp's years of operation, an unknown amount of radioactive waste and PCBs. The Atomic Heritage Foundation estimates that the PM-2A reactor may have generated more than 47.000 gallons of low-level radioactive waste during its lifetime, and that or more of it is likely buried under the ice.
Earlier 2D radar images of Century show the presence of buried debris, so scientists know it's there, but without better imaging they can't know if anything has shifted or may be leaking.
