NASA radar rediscovers Cold War nuclear base buried under Greenland
A NASA radar flight over Greenland in 2024 stumbled onto the buried remains of Camp Century, a Cold War Army base built into the ice sheet that once ran on nuclear power and served as the test bed for a much larger, never-built missile network.
Snapshot
Camp Century, built starting in 1959, housed roughly 200 soldiers in tunnels cut into Greenland's ice and powered by the Army's PM-2A reactor. According to military.com, the base was more than a research station: it was a proof of concept for Project Iceworm, a proposed 2,500-mile tunnel network meant to hide up to 600 nuclear missiles aimed at the Soviet Union. The ice itself ultimately doomed the plan.
Key points
- Built into the ice: Army engineers dug trenches, covered them with steel arches and snow, and ran a main passage over 1,000 feet long, supplying the camp via an over-snow trail from Thule Air Base.
- Nuclear-powered: The PM-2A reactor ran from 1960 for about 33 months before the Army removed it, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.
- Secret bigger plan: Project Iceworm proposed covering about 50,000 square miles with tunnels for 600 missiles, a scheme kept hidden from Denmark's government even though Denmark had approved Camp Century, per the American Geophysical Union.
- Killed by the ice: Shifting, deforming ice threatened the tunnels; the Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected Iceworm in 1963, and Camp Century was abandoned by 1967.
- Left behind: A 2016 study warned that warming could eventually expose diesel fuel, sewage and low-level radioactive waste left buried at the site.
Quick take
Camp Century shows how far Cold War planners were willing to go to hide a nuclear arsenal, and how a hostile environment can outlast even a well-funded ambition. The 2024 NASA imagery is a reminder that some Cold War leftovers are still down there, waiting on the climate to decide when they resurface.
Read the full story: military.com