‘Secret city’ buried under Greenland’s ice could leak radioactive waste, experts warn

It sounds like the location of a science fiction film - a secret nuclear-powered ‘city under the ice’, where U.S. Army engineers carried out hush-hush weapons research.

But the futuristic base in northwestern Greenland is not only real - it poses a serious concern over toxic waste, as Greenland’s ice melts.

The nuclear reactor at the base - which also had a hospital and a church in its tunnels - has long since been removed, but radioactive waste remains.

‘Camp Century’ was built by U.S. Army engineers in 1959, but abandoned in 1967, as the researchers realised that the glacier was moving.

Assuming the site would remain frozen in perpetuity, the US army removed the nuclear reactor but allowed waste - equivalent to the mass of 30 Airbus A320 airplanes - to be entombed under the snow.

‘Two generations ago, people were interring waste in different areas of the world,’ said Liam Colgan, a climate scientist at York University in Toronto.

‘And now climate change is modifying those sites. When it reached end of life, the army just closed the doors on it and left everything in place.

‘They did take out the nuclear reaction vessel, but they left everything else in place. Buildings, trucks, supplies, waste, all of it. They thought it would snow forever.’