Researcher stationed at Arctic facility during Cold War unveiled hidden agenda years later.
Revamped Rewrite:
Strap on your parka, friends, because we're diving headfirst into the chilly tale of Camp Century, a Cold War-era hub of scientific discovery buried deep under the Greenland ice cap. In the murky depths of 1962, our unsuspecting protagonist, Dr. Robert Weiss, was conscripted into the United States military and found himself trekking to a remote corner of Greenland.
Yeah, you heard that right: a nuclear-powered city in the freakin' ice!
His orders? Serve as a camp doctor at what he thought was a polar research station. But little did he know, the real mission was much more ambitious: Camp Century was part of a top-secret plan to conceal launch sites for missiles strategically placed in the Arctic, all in the name of getting a leg up on the Russkies.
Weiss, who casually hung out at Yale University as the Donald Guthrie Professor of Urology, recalled his time at the icy outpost with vivid clarity. He spent nearly a year there in total, living in an underground network of two dozen tunnels, complete with sleeping quarters, labs, a mess hall, and even a gym. And let's not forget about the nuclear reactor at the heart of the base, slowly ticking away and powering this subterranean metropolis.
While the strategic importance of Camp Century proved fleeting—the US military tossed this icy gem in the trash can by the late 1960s—the groundbreaking science conducted there left a lasting impact. Researchers made strides in fields like geophysics, paleoclimatology, and even communication studies, laying the foundation for future discoveries.
Fast forward to today, and Camp Century is still buried beneath the ice, stalked by winter snowfalls that continue to pile up, keeping it mummified at least 30 meters below the surface. But things might change, thanks to climate change, which has the potential to send Mother Nature into a reversal, slowly exposing the dormant hazards hidden beneath.
Studies over the last decade predict that this climate-driven dynamic might flip, posing an environmental hazard that, to be honest, nobody's really dealt with yet.
Intrigued? Yeah, you should be! Recent discoveries by NASA scientists using high-tech radar mapping technology have revealed striking imagery of Camp Century's structures lurking beneath the ice. It's a testament to the weird and wild life that only a select few, like our man Weiss, could ever experience firsthand.
A subterranean city
Building a "city under the ice" was an unprecedented feat of engineering. Today's polar research stations are typically constructed on top of the ice, but when Camp Century rolled around, things took a dramatic turn underground.
Powerful machines chewed through the snow, digging a complex network of tunnels. Once installed, prefabricated buildings were erected in these underground caverns, offering accommodations for sleeping, toilets, experiments, dining, laundry, and even a gym. The base's title as a nuclear-powered city came courtesy of a slow-moving nuclear reactor, transported across the ice and installed beneath the surface.
Life at Camp Century wasn't as harsh as Weiss initially feared. Inside the cozy huts, warmth and dryness reigned supreme. His medical duties were relatively light, thanks to the camp's young and vibrant population. When he had some free time, our buddy Bob embraced the true spirit of science: chilling out with medical textbooks, playing chess and bridge, and sipping 10-cent martinis. The food, he said, was "outstanding."
"Living conditions were typically good (even though) you were in, you were under the snow. There was a big tunnel you could drive a truck into it, into the campus, and it was a long tunnel," Weiss reminisced.
Water, important for sustaining life, was supplied through an ice well equipped with a drill that produced hot steam. Sophisticated systems also pumped sewage down into the ice sheet.
Shortly after Camp Century became operational in 1960, radiation concerns threatened to shut down the nuclear reactor. Lead had to be shipped in to prevent leaks and protect the reactor's components. But by the time Weiss arrived in 1962, these problems had been ironed out, and he didn't report any unease living close to a nuclear reactor.
"We were told that one of the main aims of Camp Century was to prove that an isolated installation could safely and efficiently be powered by nuclear energy," he said.
Weiss rarely ventured aboveground. "I could stay in the hole, the trench, for weeks and never come out," he said. "I had no reason to be up there. But I did sometimes go up there with other officers to see what was going on."
Project Iceworm
Camp Century claimed the spotlight between 1960 and 1964, then continued to operate during summers until its closure in 1967. The station's official mission was scientific research, but an unspoken ambition lurked beneath the surface: Project Iceworm.
Project Iceworm was a clandestine mission aiming to create a network of missile launch sites connected by an extensive tunnel system under the Arctic ice. The ultimate goal was to potentially strike Russia with greater precision. This grand plan aspired to cover an area the size of Alabama—around 52,000 square miles (about 135,000 square kilometers)—with the capacity to deploy some 600 missiles[1][2].
Weiss claimed he witnessed what may have been an ill-fated attempt to construct a crucial aspect of Project Iceworm: a subsurface railroad that could sneak missiles under Russian surveillance[1][2].
Project Iceworm was nothing more than a fleeting memory until 1997, when the Danish Institute of International Affairs unearthed a trove of declassified US documents. Sadly, no missiles ever made it to the snowy wilds of Camp Century, although nuclear missiles were kept at a nearby US military outpost, Thule Air Base[1].
The full extent of Project Iceworm remains shrouded in mystery. Several documents have yet to be declassified or await their turn in the spotlight[1].
"Project Iceworm deserves a much bigger history because we only really have this one document that describes it," said Kristian Nielsen, an associate professor at Aarhus University in Denmark. "We don't really have the original Project Iceworm documents."
It's unclear whether Project Iceworm was the child of Camp Century or vice versa, according to Nielsen. "A lot of people seem to think that Project Iceworm was the big scheme behind Camp Century, but I'm thinking that Camp Century was already underway and then they thought, OK, what if we expand this."
Weiss said he never heard a peep about Project Iceworm during his stints at Camp Century[1].
Camp Century's legacy
The effort and expense required to maintain a labyrinth of tunnels in the ice cap ultimately led to the decision to shutter Camp Century in 1967. As the gradual movement of the ice sheet deformed the structures, the tunnels became narrower over time. Transporting the accumulated ice and snow to the surface took up a hefty chunk of time and resources[1].
While Camp Century was a forced adventure for Weiss, it marked a turning point in his life. The quiet moments spent in his bunk led him to delve deeper into his studies, setting the stage for a successful career in urology.
The scientific legacy of Camp Century lives on, particularly in climate research. Over the course of seven years, scientists at Camp Century drilled the first core of ice capturing the full thickness of the ice sheet—a depth of 4,560 feet (1,390 meters)—and included sediment from the ground below[1]. These initial ice cores laid the foundation for the study of past climate conditions spanning more than 100,000 years[1].
Similar to how tree rings reveal past climatic conditions, ice cores provide annual variations in snow and ice, and oxygen isotopes can be used as an indicator of temperature[1].
Risks of waste exposure in a warming world
The melting Greenland ice sheet today threatens to expose the toxic waste left behind by Camp Century and other military installations, raising concerns about potential environmental hazards[2].
Climate scientist William Colgan first visited Camp Century in 2010 and subsequently embarked on a multiyear project to log and understand the risks associated with waste disposal at the base[3]. The camp's nuclear reactor had been removed, but radioactive wastewater had been discharged into an ice cavity during its operational years, and sewage remains encased in the ice[3].
It's unclear whether the waste and debris entombed in the ice will remain buried forever. Projections suggest the site will experience no significant melting before 2100. However, if the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius is not adopted, future melting might accelerate after 2100[3].
The core extracted from Camp Century nearly five decades ago continues to yield new information. While much of the sample was destroyed during the initial phase of study, the remaining segments are stored at the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility near Denver[3]. However, sediment from the very bottom of the core that researchers had lost track of after leaving Buffalo in the 1990s mysteriously turned up in 2017 stored in glass jars in a freezer in Copenhagen[3].
"This core lives on," said geographer and geomorphologist Paul Bierman. "It lives on in a way that is telling us, at a time we absolutely need to know how the Greenland Ice Sheet behaved in the past, when that body of ice was gone."
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- Science conducted at Camp Century significantly advanced fields such as geophysics, paleoclimatology, and communication studies, paving the way for future research.
- Rarely mentioned, NASA scientists have recently used high-tech radar mapping technology to identify the remnants of Camp Century underneath the Greenland ice cap.
- Radioactive wastewater was discharged into an ice cavity at Camp Century during its operational years, and sewage remains encased in the ice. Rising temperatures due to climate change may eventually threaten the exposure of this toxic waste in a warming world.
