Project Iceworm was the code name for a US Army proposal during the Cold War (a study was started in 1958), to build a major network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. Unsteady ice conditions caused the project to be cancelled in 1966.
Contents |
Details of the project were first published in January 1997 when the Danish Foreign Policy Institute (DUPI) was asked by the Danish parliament to research the history of nuclear weapons in Greenland during the Thulegate scandal.[1]
To test the feasibility of construction techniques a project site called "Camp Century" was started, located at an elevation of 6,600 feet (2,000 m) in northwestern Greenland, 150 miles (240 km) from the US Thule Air Base.
Camp Century was a demonstration of affordable ice cap military outposts. Project Iceworm was to be a system of tunnels 4000 km in length used to deploy around 600 nuclear missiles, which would be able to reach the USSR in case of nuclear war. The missile locations would be under the cover of Greenland's ice sheet and were supposed to be periodically changed.
A total of 21 tunnels were built; these tunnels also contained a hospital, a shop, a theater and a church. The total number of inhabitants was around 200. From 1960 until 1963 the electricity supply was provided by means of the world's first mobile/portable nuclear reactor "Alco PM-2A" [2]. Water was supplied by melting glaciers and tested to determine if germs such as the plague were present.
It was discovered that the ice was moving much more intensively than had been anticipated and would destroy the tunnels and launch stations in about two years. The facility was evacuated in 1965 and the nuclear generator removed. Project Iceworm was cancelled for good and Camp Century closed in 1966.
Nevertheless, the project generated valuable scientific information and provided scientists with some of the first ice cores, still being used by climatologists today.