NASA’s accidental radar discovery of Camp Century, a long-lost U.S. Cold War military base deep beneath Greenland’s ice, brings to light a chilling dual narrative: an ambitious secret plan for nuclear missiles code-named Project Iceworm, and the abandoned nuclear waste now threatened by a rapidly warming climate.
For decades, the vast, unforgiving expanse of the Greenland Ice Sheet has held countless secrets, from ancient tools and preserved animal corpses to World War II aircraft. Now, it has unveiled another astonishing relic: a forgotten U.S. military base from the Cold War era, buried deep beneath layers of ice and snow.
In April 2024, a team of NASA scientists and engineers were conducting a routine science flight over the Greenland Ice Sheet, testing advanced radar technology. What they stumbled upon was anything but routine. On their radar, a distinct, structured layout emerged, more than 100 feet below the surface. This unexpected finding was quickly identified as Camp Century, an infamous “city under the ice” that had been lost to time and glacial movement.
Alex Gardner, a cryospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) who helped lead the project, recalled the surprise. “We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century,” he stated. “We didn’t know what it was at first.” The discovery was made possible by UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar), a sophisticated technology that uses radio waves for dimensional mapping, providing a clearer, more detailed view than standard 2D radar images.
Building a Secret Fortress: The Genesis of Camp Century
Constructed in secrecy between June 1959 and October 1960 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Camp Century was an ambitious feat of engineering. The base comprised 21 underground tunnels, stretching an impressive 9,800 feet, as reported by Interesting Engineering. It took 6,000 tons of material, laboriously transported on heavy bobsleds at a meager two miles per hour, making the 70-hour trek from Thule, another U.S. base in Greenland.
The conditions were brutal. Engineers faced temperatures plummeting to -70 degrees Fahrenheit and winds reaching 125 miles per hour. Despite these extreme challenges, they carved out a network of trenches, including a 1,000-foot-long passageway dubbed “Main Street,” before assembling wooden buildings and steel roofs. The entire operation was made possible by the PM-2 medium-power nuclear reactor, a marvel of its time, which provided essential power in the freezing environment.
The U.S. presence in Greenland stemmed from the 1951 Defense of Greenland agreement with Denmark (which Greenland was a county of at the time), allowing for military installations to defend the North Atlantic Treaty area, according to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History.
Project Iceworm: A Nuclear Deception
While Camp Century was publicly presented as a scientific research station—and did, in fact, facilitate significant geological breakthroughs, including pioneering ice core studies and discovering evidence of ancient verdant forests in Greenland—its true purpose was far more sinister. This scientific endeavor was merely a cover for Project Iceworm, a top-secret U.S. nuclear weapon strategy unbeknownst to the Danish government.
The audacious plan envisioned Camp Century as the nerve center for a massive arsenal of ballistic missiles. The U.S. military projected an additional 52,000 square miles of tunnels, capable of housing 600 missiles across 60 launch centers, all to be manned by 11,000 soldiers living full-time beneath the ice. The following video, a promotional piece from the era, offers a glimpse into the operational life at Camp Century, albeit without revealing its true strategic intent:
Ultimately, Project Iceworm never materialized. The sheer scale and logistical infeasibility, compounded by the dynamic nature of the ice sheet itself, proved insurmountable. By 1967, Camp Century was decommissioned and abandoned, a testament to the colossal ambitions and limitations of the Cold War. The full scope of Project Iceworm was only officially revealed to the public by the Danish Institute of International Affairs in 1997.
The Unforeseen Legacy: A Cold War Waste Dilemma
The story of Camp Century, however, doesn’t end with its abandonment. In a critical oversight, while the nuclear reactor was removed, a substantial amount of waste generated during the base’s 33 months of operation was left behind. This includes an estimated 47,000 gallons of nuclear waste, according to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. Further studies, such as a 2016 CIRES-led analysis, estimate the waste footprint covers approximately 136 acres—the size of 100 football fields—containing an additional 53,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 63,000 gallons of wastewater, as reported by The Guardian.
This waste was once believed to be “preserved for eternity,” safely entombed by the ever-accumulating ice. However, the rapidly accelerating pace of climate change has dramatically altered this outlook. A landmark 2016 study, published in AGU Publications and led by William Colgan, a climate and glacier scientist at Toronto’s York University, projected that Camp Century could begin losing its ice cover as early as 2090.
“They thought it would never be exposed,” Colgan told The Guardian in 2016. “Back then, in the ‘60s, the term global warming had not even been coined. But the climate is changing, and the question now is whether what’s down there is going to stay down there.”
The Long-Term Impact and Community Perspective
The rediscovery of Camp Century serves as a stark reminder of the long-term consequences of Cold War strategic decisions colliding with modern environmental realities. For many in the global community, it’s a chilling case study in the audacity of past military projects and the unforeseen liabilities they can create. Discussions across forums and academic circles often highlight the pressing need for international cooperation in addressing such buried dangers, underscoring that what was once a geopolitical secret has now become an urgent environmental concern.
The accidental observation by NASA’s UAVSAR is more than just a historical footnote; it’s a critical early warning. This technological capability will be crucial for future monitoring of Greenland’s ice sheet, allowing scientists to track the integrity of Camp Century’s icy tomb and anticipate when its buried waste might finally emerge, demanding a comprehensive, globally coordinated clean-up effort.
