Camp Century Update

Not exactly sure where to put this, Military Projects or Global meltdown?
Ran across this article from Glacialhub.org about a recent expedition to radar map and establish meteorological monitoring of the entombed US ice base "Camp Century" on the Northwest Greenland Ice Sheet.

Camp Century was an Arctic United States military scientific research base in Greenland.[1] It is situated 240 km east of Thule Air Base. It was part of Project Iceworm to install sites for launching nuclear missiles in Greenland. Powered by a nuclear reactor, the camp operated from 1959 until 1967. The base consisted of 21 tunnels with a complete length of 3000 m

The fear is that rising temperatures over the site will eventually turn the net snow gain into a snow loss and reveal the base and it's potentially hazardous remains, PCB's and possibly nuclear waste from it's reactor, which was removed when the base was decommissioned.
When the base was established in 1959 no summer melt occurred at the site, however from the geological survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 41 - Review of Summer activities 2017 The article documents that surface melt briefly occurred – less than one week – in both summer 2017 and 2018. Additional refrozen melt layers from the past decade are identifiable in the ice cores.
Nothing immediately to worry about as there's still a net snow gain over the site as the meteorological package left there has been buried by accumulating snow.

glacierhub.org...

A possible conspiracy going on, the article claims that nothing of the base can be seen above the snow. However Google Earth images from 2009-2011 show something there



77°10' 31.65"N, 61° 9' 37.01"W

The story of Camp Century
www.youtube.com...

Check out 76°24' 29.01"N, 68°16'29.60"W, believe this to be the "pier" built to get the heavy equipment onto the glacier.

a reply to: Wreckclues

Is there anything that would actually lead anyone to believe there is nuclear waste hidden under snow there?

Or is it just speculation because there was a base there so "They obviously left all kinds of nuclear waste and scrap"?

originally posted by: watchitburn
a reply to: Wreckclues

Is there anything that would actually lead anyone to believe there is nuclear waste hidden under snow there?

Or is it just speculation because there was a base there so "They obviously left all kinds of nuclear waste and scrap"?

Not that I know of the reactor was prefueled and was removed from the site IIRC.

originally posted by: BigDave-AR

originally posted by: watchitburn
a reply to: Wreckclues

Is there anything that would actually lead anyone to believe there is nuclear waste hidden under snow there?

Or is it just speculation because there was a base there so "They obviously left all kinds of nuclear waste and scrap"?

Not that I know of the reactor was prefueled and was removed from the site IIRC.

Perhaps it has to do with the melting - "everybody knows" radioactive stuff is "hot" - lame, I admit, but considering the general level of "critical thinking" occurring elsewhere, I mention this possibility as nod to the times...

ganjoa

originally posted by: ganjoa

originally posted by: BigDave-AR

originally posted by: watchitburn
a reply to: Wreckclues

Is there anything that would actually lead anyone to believe there is nuclear waste hidden under snow there?

Or is it just speculation because there was a base there so "They obviously left all kinds of nuclear waste and scrap"?

Not that I know of the reactor was prefueled and was removed from the site IIRC.

Perhaps it has to do with the melting - "everybody knows" radioactive stuff is "hot" - lame, I admit, but considering the general level of "critical thinking" occurring elsewhere, I mention this possibility as nod to the times...

ganjoa

I certainly hope your wrong but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit it makes me facepalm the amount of times I’ve had to explain that there’s a difference between thermal and ionizing radiation. The ignorance of some people astounds me.

ETA- Yeah the reactor unit was removed before the camp even closed up operations just using a diesel generator for base power.

By mid-1962 the ceiling of the reactor room within Camp Century had dropped and had to be lifted 5 feet (1.5 m). During a planned reactor shutdown for maintenance in late July 1963, the Army decided to operate Camp Century as a summer-only camp and did not reactivate the PM-2A reactor. The camp resumed operations in 1964 using its standby diesel power plant, the portable reactor was removed that summer, and the camp was abandoned altogether in 1966.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

So yeah I don’t see the radioacticivity being an issue at all.