Nanook's Friends of the Planet: Melting sheet ice in Greenland poses radioactive danger from buried US cold war army base

Global warming could release radioactive waste stored in an abandoned Cold War-era U.S. military camp deep under Greenland's ice caps if a thaw continues to spread in coming decades, scientists said on Friday.

Camp Century was built in northwest Greenland in 1959 as part of U.S. research into the feasibility of nuclear missile launch sites in the Arctic, the University of Zurich said in a statement.

Staff left gallons of fuel and an unknown amount of low-level radioactive coolant there when the base shut down in 1967 on the assumption it would be entombed forever, according to the university.

It is all currently about 35 meters (114.83 ft) down. But the part of the ice sheet covering the camp will probably melt by the end of the century, going by current trends, the scientists added.

"Climate change could remobilize the abandoned hazardous waste believed to be buried forever beneath the Greenland ice sheet," the university said of findings published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The study, led by York University in Canada in collaboration with the University of Zurich, estimated that pollutants in the camp included 200,000 liters (44,000 UK gallons) of diesel fuel and the coolant from a nuclear generator used to produce power.

"It's a new breed of political challenge we have to think about," lead author William Colgan, a climate and glacier scientist at York University, said in a statement.

"If the ice melts, the camp's infrastructure, including any remaining biological, chemical, and radioactive wastes, could re-enter the environment and potentially damage nearby ecosystems," the University of Zurich said.

The study said it would be extremely costly to try to remove any waste now. It recommended waiting "until the ice sheet has melted down to almost expose the wastes before beginning site remediation."

There was no immediate comment from U.S. authorities.

Greenland lies just off the Eastern coast of Canada, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe (specifically Norway and Denmark). It is an autonomous country and is the world's largest island, although it is smaller than Australia, which is considered a continent. Three-quarters of Greenland is covered by the only permanent ice sheet outside of Antarctica. With a population of about 56,480 it is the least densely populated country in the world. One never hears much about Greenland but it has been inhabited for 4,500 years by Arctic peoples like the Inuit who migrated there from Canada and survive there by hunting and fishing.

Vikings settled the uninhabited southern part of Greenland beginning in the 10th century.

Polar bears, musk oxen, caribou, arctic foxes, hares, eagles, ptarmigan, lemmings and the rare Arctic wolf are a few of the hundreds of Arctic species which are part of the terrestrial fauna of Greenland and must be protected. Several of the species are now endangered and radioactive waste could only make their continued existence more at risk. Another tragedy we would be accountable for.