In early August, it became known that the melting of the Greenland ice is bringing to the surface radioactive waste buried under a thick layer of snow from the American military base Camp Century. Lenta.ru recalls the history of this mysterious under-ice structure, its place in the Cold War and its unique role as a military scientific laboratory.
Shield and sword against the USSR
The Americans became interested in Greenland during World War II, having received permission from the ambassador of occupied Denmark to use the island for defense purposes (since 1814, Greenland is a Danish colony). The Cold War made the island vital for air defense - the shortest route for strategic bombers and missiles from the USSR to the United States passed through Greenland.
Already in 1951, the Americans built their northernmost Thule airbase there (1118 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle). But soon the Pentagon decided that strategic bombers and a radar station were not able to protect the United States from an unexpected breakthrough by the "Reds" through the Arctic. Project Iceworm was born: to place 600 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on the island, constantly moving along rails in tunnels under the ice sheet.
Sketch of a mobile launcher
Image: thuleforum.dk
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To disguise the defense project, the public was offered not a secret and frightening, but an open and utopian plan - to build an ideal ice city in Greenland, where scientists, engineers and the military will work together to solve their creative problems. Camp Century was to become a symbol of the moral and technical superiority of the “free world” conquering the Arctic.
From the glacier to the moon
The work began in 1960. In the ice sheet, 21 tunnels with a total length of three kilometers were broken. Laboratories, a library, a chapel, a cafe, rest rooms, and laundries were built from the finished blocks delivered by caterpillar tractors. And the barracks. The world's first mobile nuclear reactor, the Alco PM-2A, provided electricity. Water was taken from the glacier (up to 38 thousand liters per day), melted with hot steam and checked for the presence of microbes. We have thought over heating, sewerage and ventilation shafts. Up to 200 people were constantly in the camp.
Photographers presented to the Americans all this as a heroic feat of workers and engineers, rapidly creating all the infrastructure necessary for life during the short Arctic summer, as well as a calm enjoyment of the American way of life in any conditions. “Although at first it seems like you are in a sci-fi movie, in reality life inside a glacier is not much different from American or Canadian towns. Scientists and soldiers are lightheartedly experimenting, playing ping-pong, carving model airplanes, eating steaks and washing clothes,”wrote CBS producer Walter Wager in a 1962 report.
Base entrance
Photo: thuleforum.dk
Transport caravan
Photo: thuleforum.dk
Installation of a mobile nuclear reactor
Photo: thuleforum.dk
Engineers install a roof over the tunnel
Photo: Camp Century: “City Under The Ice. Story of Our Incredible Polar Base Below the Greenland Ice Cap »
Inside the tunnel
Photo: thuleforum.dk
Ice crack detector near the base
Photo: thuleforum.dk
Wager emphasized: the camp is a successful social experiment in the survival of the collective in isolation from the familiar environment. The most ordinary Americans, it turns out, can work together for months under the ice, without suffering from depression and hysterics, without making scandals to each other. Not a single tragic scene like the Red Alert, Wager notes.
The Americans showed their readiness for the next "jump" - to the lunar and Martian bases. “US scientists planning the first outpost of the free world on the moon can be sure of one thing. Camp Century has proven that if the technical side of the matter is well developed, there are young people who can take on this mission … and break through the darkness."
The military missions of Camp Century were silent, and scientific ones were praised even in the official US Army film dedicated to the camp, The Story of Camp Century: The City Under Ice. The camp was called the "Ideal Arctic Laboratory". The film culminated in the transportation and assembly of multi-ton nuclear reactor blocks in a blizzard.
Military PR traps
However, there was no shortage of military ideas. Camp Century was offered to equip a powerful radar station, squadrons of jet fighters hidden in under-ice hangars and at the right time thrown into the sky with steam catapults, like on aircraft carriers, missile batteries that would prevent Soviet warheads from reaching America, and, finally, paratrooper detachments, ready promptly disembark from aircraft at the Siberian bases of the USSR. The most promising idea seemed to be the placement of missiles and interceptors in under-ice hangars.
Officers are resting
Photo: pinscheren.dk
Mini-shop inside the camp
Photo: Camp Century: “City Under The Ice. Story of Our Incredible Polar Base Below the Greenland Ice Cap »
The officers are grilling a kebab
Photo: thuleforum.dk
In the base library
Photo: Camp Century: “City Under The Ice. Story of Our Incredible Polar Base Below the Greenland Ice Cap »
At the opening of the rebuilt officers' club
Photo: thuleforum.dk
Toilet for one hundred people
Photo: thuleforum.dk
In the dining room
Photo: pinscheren.dk
However, the US authorities did not even say a word about these plans with the Danes, who still officially belonged to Greenland. The kingdom's government was critical of nuclear weapons - in part because of the powerful pacifist movement and the proximity of Soviet tanks. Denmark did not allow the deployment of nuclear weapons on its territory, including the Greenland one (although the military turned a blind eye to the presence of bombers carrying nuclear weapons at the Tula airbase). The famous polar explorer Paul Siple, who worked for the Pentagon, arrived in Copenhagen in February 1960 to receive the Royal Geographical Society's medal. He assured the Danish press that there were no military secrets in Camp Century and purely scientific problems were being solved in the camp. Engineers calculated the optimal dimensions of the tunnels, analyzed their deformation,studied the impact of Arctic conditions on mental and physical health, as well as the suitability of permafrost for long-term storage of food.
The original plan - to "cover" the deployment of missiles and interceptors in the glaciers of Greenland with a bright and attractive "scientific" project Camp Century - worked. However, the very promotion of the camp in the American and world media made it impossible to maintain secrecy - the public guessed that the Pentagon had started this enterprise for a reason and the militarization of Greenland was inevitable.
Glorious end
However, it was not nosy journalists and obstinate Danes who ultimately killed Camp Century. According to the plan, the camp had to stand for 10 years, until 1970, after which it would have to be abandoned due to the movement of glaciers. To prevent the walls and roof from collapsing, maintenance personnel had to remove more than 120 tons of snow and ice from the surface of the ice sheet every month. But already in 1962, due to the ramming of snow, the roof over the nuclear power plant dropped by one and a half meters (it had to be raised in an emergency). In 1964, the deformation of the tunnels became dangerous for the reactor, and the nuclear power plant was dismantled. For another year, the station operated on diesel generators, and in 1965 it was completely evacuated.
And again, the popularity of Camp Century forced the army to make excuses to the Americans - why was the "outpost of the free world", on which tens of millions of taxpayers' dollars was spent, shut down so quickly? However, the Pentagon presented the fiasco of American engineers as a success: advanced construction technologies in Arctic conditions have been tested, and the mobility of submarines with Polaris missiles made it unnecessary to build under-ice tunnels for ICBMs.
Barrel with radioactive waste from the reactor
Image: thestormking.com
Military engineers and scientists extract ice cores
Image: thestormking.com
At the very last moment, the Camp Century base served world science. The Danish paleoclimatologist Willi Dansgaard was the first to guess that the isotopic ratio of oxygen and deuterium in glaciers can serve as an indicator of the climate of past centuries. Having agreed with his colleagues from the US Army, Dansgaard achieved the fact that in the summer of 1966, in an already closed camp, they drilled a glacier to a depth of 1390 meters and extracted ice cores (columns) from there. They, as it turned out later, stored information about a hundred thousand years of climatic history.
Artem Kosmarsky