Abandoned US Military Base in Greenland Will Spill Its Secrets as Ice Melts Away

Camp Century was built in 1959 as part of Project Iceworm, a classified US Army program that was aimed at building mobile launch sites for medium-range nuclear ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in the Soviet Union in case of a nuclear war.

Baranets called the scale of construction works "impressive." The base was supposed to be a system of tunnels 4,000 kilometers in length that would store 600 modified Minuteman missiles. The actual facility contained 3,000 kilometers of tunnels, a hospital, a shop, a theater and a church.

Camp Century was powered by the world's first mobile nuclear reactor, designed by the American Locomotive Company. "The key question is what happened to the reactor," the analyst observed. "Although it was portable, it was still no joke."

The base was never meant to last in the harsh conditions of Greenland's northwest. The icecap moved too fast, deforming the base at an unsustainable rate. The ceiling in Camp Century's reactor room collapsed in mid-1962, less than three years after it was built. By July 1963 the reactor was shut down and later removed. The facility was powered by a diesel power plant.

Nevertheless, the nuclear reactor left its mark on the base and its surrounding area.

"The most important thing that sadly needs to be mentioned and that the US kept secret is that approximately 200 tons of radioactive water were produced before Project Iceworm was canceled. It was discharged directly into Greenland's ice sheet," the analyst explained, adding that this information was only made public in 1997.

The US abandoned the base and its waste in 1967, also leaving approximately 80 percent of the equipment behind, he added. The US military was convinced that the facility will remain frozen for centuries and did not carry out proper decommissioning.

The Americans, according to the analyst, "badly miscalculated" what would happen to the ice in Greenland. A recently released study, titled "The abandoned ice sheet base at Camp Century, Greenland, in a warming climate," found that the base could unfreeze in the next 75 years.

"We cannot rule out that radioactive waste and radioactive water will not contaminate Greenland," Baranets said. He also mentioned that "the sooner the world will determine the level of the threat posed by the melting ice near the base, the faster we will be able to make steps" to offset this challenge.

The United States "wasted $7.8 billion on this project," he added, saying that this amount is today equal to three or four nuclear submarines. "This deadly project was carried out for nothing, but its threat is real."