New Technologies
New technologies were used not only in construction of the arctic camps but in daily life as well. These included a new type of plow for digging the tunnels, a portable nuclear reactor for power, and scientific innovations such as strong synthetic materials and the collection of ice cores.
Camp Century was experimenting with nuclear power as an energy source. For two years, it replaced fuel oil which were far more expensive. In magazines of the time, emphasis was put on the dangers of assembling the reactor, which brings us back to Macho and Manly.
Camp Century's nuclear power plant, the PM-2A, produced enough energy for 1,500 average homes and fully powered the camp from 1961-1963.
The reactor also produced steam that was used to melt ice to supply freshwater. Sewage was dumped into empty wells and froze, leaving millions ofgallons to be thawed and exposed sometime soon (perhaps a century from now) as as result of global warming.
The Peter Plow, designed for the deep snow of the Alps, was used to cut trenches in the ice sheet. Metal sheet arches were placed over the opening and loose snow was blown over them that would soon harden into "snowcrete". The Peter Plow could do in hours what previously took days by hand.
This small stick of snothetic material (called snowcrete) can hold up to 50 pounds. This was a mixture of snow and other materials such as sawdust to strengthen the snow and create a type of "snowcrete".
Scientists studied ice cores, thin cylinders of ice drilled from the icecap. The air bubbles trapped in the ice reveal what the atmosphere was like thousands of years ago. Such data help us discover how our climate has changed over time.
These scientists, including Chet Langwasy at the center, are presenting an ice core to Army leaders at the Pentagon (the Army supported the drilling of the core). The Camp Centiry ice cores contains ice at its base that is more than 100,000 years old.