In Greenland a bunker under ice powered by a nuclear reactor which, after its abandonment, was filled with toxic and radioactive waste. This is the story of Camp Centurya base made by the USA with the aim of launching missiles to the USSR in case of conflict during the Cold War. Today, however, incredibly, from military excellence it has turned into a landfill of toxic waste And radioactive.
The construction of the base
Year 1959. We are in the middle of the Cold War. The rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States pushed these two superpowers to point their eyes towards the Arctic Circle Which, until then, was a “bearing” area between the two superpowers. An area ready to be conquered to obtain strategic advantages. As it is easy to imagine, some countries, such as Greenland, had to decide which side to be on. For this in 1951 An agreement was signed between the USA and Denmark that had the dual purpose of defending the Danish territory (therefore including Greenland) and to provide the USA with a support point to launch missiles in the Soviet Union, in the event that the Cold War had taken a bad turn.
This was part of a Top-Secret project of the United States called PRogetto Iceworm. The “public” coverage of this program was a base in the Greenland ice, Camp Century: formally it was a center Of research – and it was actually – but the secret goal of Lancia-Missile base It was revealed only many years later.
The site, whose construction was entrusted to the Us Army Polar Research and Development Centerwould have arisen in the north-western portion of the island, at about 120 km from the coastand unlike other military bases in the area, it would not have been built above the surface, but below: it would therefore have been a bunker dug in the ice!
As it was made of Camp Century
If we take official documents and look at tunnels in plan, we can see how there is one central gallery, More subtle, and designed for the passage of vehicles, and then a whole series of side tunnels that housed the various staff buildings.
Each building was actually nothing more than a prefabricated, designed to be assembled directly inside the bunker above a platform, with foundations stuck directly in the ice: this suspension compared to the soil level allowed exploit the air between the tunnel and the external walls as thermal insulatorminimizing the energy necessary for heating.
Within these prefabricated, all the vital organs were located: there was headquarters, the research and development department, offices, the pantry, the kitchen and the accommodation, but also areas dedicated to leisure, such as a small church, cinema, relaxation areas and the library. As regards the supply of drinking water – which is a problem that is not a little in that type of environment – it was thought to dig a vertical well inside the ice and to merge the base with jets of steam: at that depth the ice had a density such as to be substantially waterproof to water, thus creating a natural tank.
And i missiles Instead? The base served this right? Well in reality the main objective was to study the feasibility of a structure of this type, but in fact The Danish government never gave the green light to the USA For the import of missiles, and therefore the base was never armed. In fact it was more than anything else a structure dedicated to research.
Among other things, one of the main fronts of the research was the one linked Energy supply … That is, in a base of this type, where do you take the energy necessary to make it work?
Camp Century’s nuclear reactor
As the first option it was thought to use some diesel generators or kerosenebut it was realized that it was too difficult to guarantee continuous supplies in such a remote place. It was therefore thought of renewables, but the hydroelectric was not feasible, the sun was not usable during the arctic nights and the wind turbbeard was too inconstant to be reliable.
Therefore remained a single solution, that is, the realization of a nuclear reactor. Specifically, he opted for a PM-2A, that is, a nuclear reactor prefabricated: This option was chosen to allow greater ease of installation and put in place in such a hostile environment.
The fuel elements were in plates of Uranium dioxide (Uo2) and the interesting thing is that in addition to producing electricity, essential both to have current and for heating, it was possible to take advantage of a heat exchanger to obtain hot steam to be used to merge the ice and obtain drinking water. It is no coincidence that the two plants, the water and the energy one, were in adjacent positions inside the bunker.
In addition to this, in reality there was also a diesel generatorused only during periodic reactor maintenance.
How tunnels were dug in the ice
The choice to dig tunnels in the ice brought different with it advantages, such as one less exposure of structures to the extreme climate of Greenland, one almost constant temperature all year round and, above all, it was much more hidden in the eyes of the enemy.
At the same time, however, building a bunker of this type was a lot complex From a technical point of view, and one of the main difficulties was to dig the tunnels efficiently. After several tests, it was decided to use a particular machine used at the time in Switzerland, the Peter Snow Miller. This vehicle allowed to dig in In the snow quickly and efficiently, with a excavation rate of about 600 cubic meters per hour. Once this is done, metal supports were inserted and covered again with compacted snow.
With this technique they dug a total of 4 km of gallerieswhose height varied between 4 and 7 meters and whose average depth compared to the campaign plan was approximately 8 meters.
The abandoned base
The base was abandoned in 1967: The ice was becoming unstable and the galleries were no longer so sure … After all, the project had a life expected of only 10 years, therefore, once the ongoing studies are finished, the bunker in the ice was abandoned. The problem is that the Dismissance of the system It was managed in a partial way, I would say. In the sense that to date it is not yet clear exactly which agreements were at the time between the USA and Denmark on this, but the fact is that there are still large quantities of waste inside the base.
As confirmed by a study published in 2016, they are present inside 9000 tons of physical waste, such as remains of buildings and rails, 200 thousand liters of diesel e 24 million liters of waste water. To all this is also added one not known quantity of radioactive waste deriving from the reactor’s regenerating fluid.
In short, it is a situation that is certainly not negligible, especially considering the fact that the merger of the ice is increasingly faster, and it is feared that in less than a century this waste can disperse in the environment, causing disasters in the ecosystems of the area. And who is the burden of avoiding all this?
As we said, the agreements taken between the USA and Denmark in the 1960s are not very clear, and therefore we will see in the next decades which of the two countries will decide to take responsibility.
