By ROB WAUGH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM, 2 March 2024 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13135571/Could-climate-change-release-35-swimming-pools-worth-nuclear-waste-worse-unleash-world-ending-pandemic-terrifying-unexpected-consequences-melting-ice.html
Around the world, glaciers and permafrost are melting, and in some places the retreating ice is releasing buried secrets people hoped would remain forgotten.
Rising waters have exposed a secret Greenland nuclear base that engineers thought would never resurface as well as a radioactive 'Tomb' at the site of American nuclear tests.
And while it sounds far-fetched, very credible experts have warned that the next pandemic may well come from ancient pathogens buried in the ice, or even from diseases harbored by frozen dead Neanderthals.
The 'secret nuclear city' under Greenland's ice
Camp Century in Greenland is a secret nuclear-powered 'city under the ice', where U.S. Army engineers carried out weapons research
The base has been abandoned for almost half a century, but now poses a serious concern over nuclear waste.
Powered by a portable nuclear generator, Camp Century was built in 1959, and was built to host 200 soldiers, with a plan to expand the base to hold 600 ballistic missiles.
'Camp Century' was abandoned in 1967, but the nuclear reactor at the base - which also had a hospital and a church in its tunnels - has long since been removed, but radioactive waste remains.
When the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) left the base, they assumed that frigid temperatures and falling snow would keep the nuclear waste there forever.
In total, the waste is equivalent to the mass of 30 Airbus A320 airplanes - and researchers now fear that it could be released into the sea.
A 2016 study suggested that the nuclear waste could be released into the sea this century, but newer measurements at the base suggest that this will not happen until 2100.
'Tomb' of poison at nuclear test site
In the Marshall Islands, a huge 'lid' which locals know as 'The Tomb' covers 31 million cubic feet of nuclear waste - equivalent to the volume of 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The islands were the site of American nuclear tests, but the U.S. military also shipped in waste from the mainland.
From 1946 to 1958, America conducted 67 nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
The concrete 'lid' officially known as the Runit Dome was built on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands to contain radioactive material from American nuclear tests in the 1950s.
Some studies have suggested that radiation levels near the site are similar to those near Chernobyl and the waters around the dome are rising every year.
Changing temperatures are causing the lid to crack, while rising waters are lapping at the atoll.
Plutonium - and a lost hydrogen bomb?
A 1968 plane crash scattered plutonium from American nuclear weapons over the ice in Greenland, which could be released by global warming.
The U.S. military assumed that the Thule air base in Greenland would be rapidly attacked in a nuclear war, so kept nuclear-armed bombers in the air to fly towards Russia in the event of an attack.
The Thule incident saw large amounts of radioactive plutonium dispersed onto the ice sheet, as a cabin fire in a B-52 bomber forced the crew to bail out.
Conventional explosives inside the four B28FI thermonuclear bombs detonated, spreading radioactive waste.
But the uranium-235 fissile core of one of the bombs was never found, despite a search with submarines.
Reports in the decades since have suggested that the lost bomb is lying under the seabed.
Frozen viruses and the next pandemic
Researchers have warned that the next pandemic could come from melting ice.
Genetic analysis of soil and lake sediment near the highest Arctic freshwater lake, Lake Hazen, suggests that the risk of 'viral spillover' may be high close to melting glaciers.
'Spillover' is where a virus infects a new host for the first time - and analysis of viruses and potential hosts in the lakebed suggests this risk may be higher near to melting glaciers.
Researchers at Ohio State University found genetic material from 33 viruses, 28 of which were unknown, in the Tibetan plateau in China, putting their age at 15,000 years old.
Viruses from Neanderthals
Other researchers have warned of viruses unleashed by melting permafrost: one-quarter of the northern hemisphere sits on top of permanently frozen ground - known as permafrost, but large areas are now melting as the world warms.
There are already examples of this - with a 2016 anthrax outbreak in Siberia attributed to melting permafrost exposing an infected reindeer carcass.
Previously researchers have warned that global warming and thawing ice might unearth diseases such as smallpox frozen into the corpses of victims, with a few infectious particles enough to revive the pathogen.
As permafrost thaws due to climate change, virologist Jean-Michel Claverie has warned that ancient viruses harbored in the long-frozen ground could be released.
Claverie explains that if an ancient pathogen eradicated Neanderthals, for instance, their frozen remains might still contain infectious viruses that could be unleashed as ice melts.
Claverie told Bloomberg News, "With climate change, we are used to thinking of dangers coming from the south.
"Now, we realize there might be some danger coming from the north as the permafrost thaws and frees microbes, bacteria and viruses."
Claverie's team previously revived giant viruses from up to 48,000 years ago - and the veteran scientist has warned that there could be even more ancient viruses in the ice, some of which could potentially infect humans.
Frozen poison in the ice
Polar regions have acted as a 'chemical sink' for the planet, locking away poisons in the ice - but melting ice could release this.
A study in Geophysical Research Letters found huge reserves of the toxic heavy metal mercury frozen in Arctic permafrost.
The amount may be 10 times higher than all the mercury pumped into the atmosphere from industry in three decades.
Paul Schuster, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, "This is a complete game-changer for mercury. It's a natural source, but some of it will be released through what we're doing with climate change."
Mercury is released by industry, volcanic eruptions and rock weathering - but what's less clear is what will happen if the 'pool' in the Arctic is released.
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