Climate change is poised to remobilize hazardous wastes that the U.S. Army abandoned and believed would be buried forever beneath the snow and ice in Greenland.

Camp Century was a U.S. military base built within the Greenland Ice Sheet in 1959 reminiscent of something from Star Wars’ Planet Hoth. Publicly it was a science station, but it doubled as a top-secret site for testing the feasibility of deploying nuclear missiles from the Arctic during the Cold War. When the camp was hastily decommissioned in 1967, its infrastructure and waste were abandoned under the assumption they would be entombed forever by perpetual snowfall. New research, however, shows that more than 50,000 gallons of diesel fuel, a large but unknown quantity of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), thousands of gallons of wastewater, and an unknown amount of radioactive coolant left behind may be uncovered sometime in the coming century.

Climate change has warmed the Arctic more than any other region on Earth. Our research, published in Geophysical Research Letters and conducted with an international team of scientists from Denmark, the United States, and Canada, finds that the portion of the Greenland Ice Sheet covering Camp Century could start to melt by the end of the century, and perhaps sooner.

As the ice melts, the camp’s infrastructure, as well as any remaining biological, chemical, and radioactive waste, will re-enter the environment and potentially disrupt nearby ecosystems and human health on a broader scale. The question of who is responsible for cleaning up the waste could also lead to political disputes.

Indeed, the situation might be the first case of an entirely new pathway leading from climate change to political acrimony. People have interned dangerous wastes all over the world, and now climate change is modifying those sites. This is a new breed of political challenge we have to think about.

James White, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, points out that the assumption that any waste could be buried forever under ice is unrealistic. “This stuff was going to come out anyway, but what climate change did was press the gas pedal to the floor and say, ‘It’s going to come out a lot faster than you thought.’”

A City Under the Ice

During the early years of the Cold War, the U.S. military paid special attention to the Arctic – the shortest route between the United States and the former Soviet Union. In April 1951, the U.S. government and Denmark signed a treaty to jointly defend Greenland, a Danish territory, from Soviet attack. The U.S. built several air bases in Greenland that year.

Then in 1959, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Camp Century 125 miles inland from the Greenland coast. While in operation, the camp became known as the “city under the ice.” It housed between 85 and 200 personnel, depending on the season, and was powered by a cutting-edge nuclear reactor. Its existence was not a secret: Walter Cronkite visited and aired video footage about it.

Camp Century’s official purpose was to conduct scientific research in the Arctic. But the camp also provided proof of concept for a top-secret program to test the feasibility of building nuclear missile launch sites close enough to reach the Soviet Union. Project Iceworm, as it was known, was a plan to bore a 2,500-mile long tunnel system underneath the ice capable of deploying up to 600 nuclear missiles. Camp Century was a testbed for construction techniques and living quarters (and although the camp was built with Denmark’s approval, Project Iceworm was kept secret from the Danish government).

However, Project Iceworm was abandoned before it was built. The Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected the idea and in 1967, Camp Century was decommissioned after eight years of operation. The Army Corps of Engineers removed the nuclear reactor core but left the camp’s infrastructure and all other waste behind, assuming the ice sheet would secure them forever. Since that time, falling snow has buried the camp roughly 115 feet further underneath the ice.

Forgotten Waste

Our team took an inventory of the wastes at Camp Century and ran climate model simulations to determine whether the waste is likely to stay put in a warming Arctic. The inventory was based on historical U.S. Army engineering documents to determine where and how deep the wastes were buried and how much the ice cap had moved since the 1950s.

We found the waste at Camp Century covers 136 acres, roughly the size of 100 football fields. The PCBs are likely the biggest concern for animal and human health, if they are remobilized into surface waters. Beyond the PCBs, diesel fuel, and wastewater, the site also contains an unknown volume of low-level radioactive coolant from the nuclear generator.

Our analysis shows that the wastes will not remain encased in ice forever, as was assumed by both the U.S. and Denmark when the camp was abandoned. Instead, under business-as-usual climate projections, the ice will melt and the wastes will re-enter the environment.

The waste remobilization could begin around 2090, or perhaps somewhat earlier if existing assumptions in climate models prove too optimistic. Nonetheless, the immediate job in the short term is not costly environmental remediation, but rather some field research to more precisely locate and quantify the wastes. That research would allow ongoing monitoring of the wastes to ensure there is no remobilization or impact on human health.

If no action is taken on Camp Century, pollutants could be transported to the ocean as the ice melts. Once the pollutants are in the ocean, they could disrupt marine ecosystems and accumulate in the food chain, perhaps even reaching human diets.

Whose Responsibility?

We do not advocate for starting remediation activities at Camp Century in the short term. The waste is buried tens of meters below the ice, and any cleanup activities will be costly and technically challenging.

But our research does raise questions about who is responsible for cleaning up the waste if and when it is exposed. International law is clear that states should avoid future hazardous waste but ambiguous about who is liable for waste already discarded. Further complicating the matter is the change in Greenland’s status since Camp Century was abandoned. Greenland was a Danish colony in 1951, but it is now mostly self-governing. And the defense treaty between the U.S. and Denmark does not appear to fully settle the matter.

We hope to continue to study the implications of climate change on Camp Century and other abandoned U.S. military bases, to assist all parties in coming to a fair, reasonable, and effective approach to managing abandoned Arctic wastes.