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The Secret Military Base Buried Under Greenland’s Glacier
And the environmental disaster that could be looming
In 1959, the United States opened a highly publicized base in Greenland. The base, dubbed Camp Century, was designed to test various construction techniques in an arctic environment as well as test a new portable nuclear reactor. The base was designed to be a sort of goodwill project. The research being conducted at the base was presented as benign, with a heavy emphasis on gaining climate information, including ice cores, soil samples, and climate monitoring. However, the actual purpose of the base was much more insidious.
The United States wanted to test the feasibility of digging tunnels within Greenland’s ice sheets. If the engineering proved successful, the United States could create bases in various arctic or antarctic environments. During the Cold War, this would have been invaluable information to have.
Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, Camp Century was largely a failure. The base had numerous issues that were seemingly impossible to resolve. First, sewage disposal and treatment were an issue. The ice and hard ground made it nearly impossible to create a sustainable runoff for human waste. It had to be pumped out via sumps. The result was a terrible smell that permeated the base, including the…
