Why some scientists think Greenland’s ice sheet is preventing a Chernobyl-like disaster

A new paper published yesterday says global warming may expose a now-defunct U.S. military base and its nuclear waste to the ##Environment, but only if Greenland’s massive ice sheet thawed. The problem: the ice covering the abandoned installation isn’t melting, but actually gaining in ice.

The paper, published in Geophysical Research Letters, said it may become exposed in 75 years, if at all. That didn’t stop the usual suspects from leaping to alarmist headlines about a Chernobyl-like disaster lying in wait beneath Greenland’s ice sheet.

More than 95 percent of Greenland’s vast interior is covered in ice, but because of its unique thermal lid shows no signs of melting. The military base, Camp Century, is located in an area of Greenland that has gained over a foot of ice in the last year alone. It’s also located on the interior of the vast ice sheet in the northwest portion of the island.

Project Iceworm

Camp Century, which was built in 1959, was ostensibly drilling for ice cores, but secretly using it as a classified testing area for ballistic missiles during the Cold War. The missile site was built to see if it was close enough to reach the Soviet Union. There were four other ice bases built in northern Greenland under the Danish-U.S. treaty under a top-secret program called Project Iceworm.

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