U.S. Cold War Military Sites in Greenland Pose Toxic Threat as Ice Melts

A Danish investigation uncovered that the United States left behind thousands of tonnes of hazardous material at more than 30 former military installations in Greenland between 1941 and 1967. The waste includes diesel fuel, PCB‑contaminated water, chemicals, and low‑intensity radioactive residues from the portable reactor used at Camp Century, a covert nuclear‑missile project.

Camp Century, built in 1959 200 km from Thule, housed a reactor, a hospital, a cinema and a church, and was intended to support a network of tunnels for up to 600 nuclear missiles. The site was abandoned in 1967 and the reactor was buried, leaving about 200,000 L of diesel, 240,000 L of wastewater, PCB‑laden coolant and other chemicals in the permafrost. Glaciologist William Colgan warned that accelerated melting could expose the material as early as 2090.

Other abandoned locations, such as the World‑War‑II airfield at Ikateq and the Thule (now Pituffik) base where a 1968 B‑52 crash scattered plutonium, also contain lingering contaminants. The Greenlandic government has demanded a cleanup since 2016, arguing that the United States – which now cites the island’s strategic importance – should remediate the toxic legacy before climate change makes it unavoidable.