Ben Cramer,
with documentation from the Robin des Bois association, Athena21,
22/2/2026
Translated by Tlaxcala
In the service of NATO - to confirm the strategic value of the Danish colony in the early days of the Cold War, the US USAmerican military installation was reinforced in 1951. As part of NATO. But this 1951 “Greenland defense treaty” mentions neither ballistic missiles, nor the portable nuclear reactor, nor the H-bombs... Obviously.
In 1993, declassified U.S. Air Force documents
revealed that, for most of the 1960s, bombers from the Strategic Air Command
(SAC) carrying nuclear weapons regularly flew over Greenland. However, this
territory of over 2 million km² is subject to a Danish ban on any presence of
nuclear weapons on its soil, according to a protocol established in 1957. Hence
the negotiations between Washington and Copenhagen over shared
responsibilities, analyzed by experts including Hans
Christensen.
Two archive photos from 1959,
the year of creation, to 1964, the end of work at Camp Century. On the left,
the melt rate in the Thule region. © Colgan.
This military installation was carried out at the
expense of the Kalaallit (Inuit) people. For example: to give its green light for the
expansion of Thule Air Base, Copenhagen did not bother to consult the local
population, represented by the Hunters' Council. Instead of a consultation, the
Danish government ordered in May 1953 the transfer/deportation of the
indigenous people of Thule (the Inughuits), a small Inuit community living from
traditional hunting and fishing. 187 of them were forced to leave their ancestral
lands to be exiled to Qaanaaq, 150 kilometers to the north. They would not
receive compensation until 1999.
Camp Century without 'Atoms for Peace'
In June 1959, construction began on Camp Century, 204
km south of Thule Base, 1,290 kilometers from the North Pole. 24 hours a day,
taking advantage of the polar day, 150 to 200 men from the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers (USACE) were at work. Officially, the aim was to sustain a community
of scientists dedicated to climate research. But in fact ....
Camp Century represented the first step in the
top-secret “Iceworm” project. Behind this facade, the pioneering base's purpose
was to study the feasibility of a ballistic missile launch site under the ice
cap to target the USSR. Even though the installation, including its “pocket”
nuclear reactor, had been revealed by the Saturday Evening Post as early
as 1960, the existence of this project, including its nuclear aspect, was only
finally made public in 1997 by the Danish Institute for International Affairs, a research institute under the Danish Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.
The Pentagon aimed to build a military complex of
approximately 135,000 km² (an area larger than Greece) in which up to 11,000
soldiers could be stationed. It was planned to store there - with the ambition
of being undetectable! - 600 Minuteman ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads
and to move them between 2,100 silos hidden beneath the Arctic ice, in order to
confuse Soviet intelligence. But no missiles were ultimately deployed at the
base.
Major Construction and Cold War Relic
Digging the sub-glacial base, using snow blowers or
giant “snow mills” brought in from the Swiss Alps, was no small feat. In total,
21 tunnels were dug, all perpendicular to a 335-meter-long “main street”"
The 55-hectare “Palace of Ice” included living quarters, a library, work and
leisure spaces, a theater, and a church. Wastewater was discharged into pits,
hoping it would freeze in the cryosphere and disappear forever from humanity's
eyes and noses.
The site was powered by diesel generators. But they needed to do better. A
2-megawatt pressurized water reactor was therefore transported in parts from
Thule onto the ice cap and assembled on site, at Camp Century.
With 20 kg of uranium 235 enriched to 93%, the PM-2A (Portable
Medium Power) demountable nuclear reactor was capable of powering the camp
for 2 years and, at the same time, replacing the annual consumption of 1.5
million liters of fuel oil by the generators. In October 1960, the PM-2A,
designed by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO), began generating
electricity. A “pocket” nuclear reactor: a world first!
But this small modular reactor, ancestor of today's SMRs, designed and built in the mid-20th century, poses a
health and environmental threat for centuries to come, as noted by Paul
Bierman, professor of environmental science at the University of Vermont,
author of “When the
Ice Is Gone. What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth's Tumultuous History
and Perilous Future.”
Is radically innovative atomic technology reassuring? According to a report by Robin des Bois, the precautions imposed on technicians tasked with inserting the fuel
rods into the reactor core were practically non-existent.
The End of an Illusion and Camp Century on Borrowed
Time
Disillusionment set in: maintaining the site proved
laborious, complicated, even absurd. The tunnel frameworks deformed and
collapsed under the compression of ice and surface snow. To prevent the
collapse of Camp Century, the soldier-engineers had to extract 40 tons of snow
from the base per week, and clear 120 tons from the surface per month. The
rigid steel railways risked deforming under the movement of the ice; missiles
could therefore tip over, and the nuclear reactor, connected to a network of
pipes, vents, and ducts themselves in motion, was also threatened. The “Iceworm”
program thus appeared increasingly untenable. Strategic disagreements within
the military and technical problems (rapid tunnel deformation, difficulty for
missiles to function properly at -20°C) led Secretary of Defense McNamara to
cancel the project in 1963. This fiasco was also the result of ignorance. As
Neil Shea wrote on nationalgeographic.com, on Jan 30, 2025: “Project Iceworm was doomed from
the start because glaciers behave like living beings. They slide, shrink, grow,
and collapse, and it is impossible for anyone to stop them.”
In haste, Camp Century was closed during the summer of
1963. During the summer of 1964, the reactor core was dismantled and
repatriated to the USA. The camp was abandoned four years later. But nothing
was resolved...
The Continuation of a Series of Disasters
After the B-52G crash on
January 21, 1968
After the closure of Camp Century, a strategic bomber
carrying nuclear munitions crashed near Thule Air Base, renamed Pituffik Space
Base in 2023. Despite the crash on the sea ice, the four H-bombs did not
detonate. However, the plane exploded, causing the rupture and dispersion of
the nuclear charges, thus contaminating the surrounding snow. A major cleanup
operation was then launched. The Inuit were “invited” to do the cleaning,
although they did not have adequate protective equipment. Many Inuit would die
as a result of their contamination. The frequency of cancer among this
population would reach record levels.
The Environmental Fallout of Camp Century
From 1967, Camp Century was left abandoned.
Completely. In the hope that snow and ice would bury the memory of the place.
William Colgan, climate and glacier specialist at York University in
Toronto, explained to The Guardian newspaper in September 2016: “back
then, in the 60s, the term 'global warming' hadn't even been invented. They
(the engineers) thought the base would never be exposed. But the climate is
changing, and the question now is whether what is down below will stay there.”
The legacy of this adventure, as grandiose as it was
ephemeral, is fraught with consequences. According to the
agreement between the USAEC and the Danish Atomic Energy Commission
(responsible for overseeing the dismantling), all solid waste was removed from
Greenland, placed in concrete containers, and submerged in designated sites in
the Arctic
Ocean or deposited in landfill sites
in the USA. All waste?
The Future of the Waste
According to a study conducted by academics from
Canada, Switzerland, the USA, and Denmark, 200,000 liters of diesel, 240,000
liters of wastewater (reactor cooling water), and 9,200 tons of solid waste
from the dismantling of frameworks, tunnels, rails, and maintenance workshops
were left abandoned. According to the study's authors, chemical waste is the
most concerning, especially PCBs (PolyChlorinatedBiphenyls), particularly
suitable for use in the Arctic zone. Thanks to their high thermal resistance
and low flammability, these PCBs - endocrine disruptors, carcinogenic,
persistent, and bioaccumulative - were used in air bases and radar stations to
prevent fires.
In 2016, the mass of solid waste from Camp Century was
concentrated at a depth of 36 meters and the mass of liquid waste around 65
meters. From 2090 onwards, due to global warming, the thickness of the ice cap
will decrease. Sooner or later, the reappearance of the waste (temporarily)
sequestered in the ice will cause, for both the environment and animal and
human populations, an additional burden resulting from the negligence of the
past. The “toxic soup” will slowly make its way towards the Melville Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, a sanctuary for the protection
of belugas, narwhals, seals, and polar bears.
Discoveries Through Coring
The scientific showcase of the project, whose true
nature was revealed by Danish officials in 1997, nonetheless allowed the
extraction of the first drilled ice core, now studied with increasing interest.
From this data emerges a clearer picture of a future where the quadrillions of
liters of freshwater currently locked in the Greenland ice cap could melt and
be “released” into the ocean.
Between Megalomaniac Dream and Ignorance
Despite all the planning, no one could have imagined
that the scientific research conducted at Camp Century, aimed at concealing the
ultimate nuclear objectives (Iceworm), would constitute the sole and only
lasting legacy of Camp Century.
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