Tim and Yannick strapping and weighing pallets next to the apron.
June 14, 2023
Tim and Yannick strapping and weighing pallets next to the apron.
Since the screw was recovered and glycol was added to the borehole yesterday, we seem to be back on track with the drilling. Long cores with normal strength core breaks have been the normal today. We have a suspicion that the glycol in the borehole prevents the ice formation during drilling that was observed earlier. Therefore, as an experiment half a kilo of glycol (one ‘bag’) was added to the borehole before drilling one of today’s cores. Indeed, the drilling went smooth and resulted in a long core. It is of course important not to leave any glycol in the borehole as it will start eroding the core, so an additional run is made to recover any left-over glycol.
The other day we watched some of the old movies and film clips from former ice-core drilling projects in Greenland. The birth of ice-core drilling was 100% cold-war driven and involved heavy logistics at the Camp Century site where ‘The city under the ice’ was located on the ice sheet some 240 km from Thule Airbase in NW Greenland in the period 1957-1969. In the movie, we are introduced to the sledge dog ‘Mukluk’ that was present in camp as mascot ‘strictly against regulation.’ In contrast, the 3-storey tall, twenty-plus-tons heavy ‘Portable nuclear power plant’ that was installed on the ice sheet to power the camp was apparently not in violation of any rules at the time. Whereas it is unclear how many of the goals originally set out for the Camp Century project that were eventually fulfilled, we have to acknowledge that an outcome of it all became the first deep ice core from Greenland. The 1390 m long ice core that was drilled to bedrock at Camp Century without any climate-related purpose, initiated ice-core science when Willi Dansgaard got his hands on it and measured its water isotopic profile on his mass spectrometer. The installation of a nuclear power plant at the EGRIP site would probably allow us to access bedrock at a faster pace, but so far, we have mostly discussed the installation of solar panels on main dome as an alternative source of energy.
What we did today:
Weather today: Nice weather most of the day, but with a front passing by in the afternoon. Temperatures -21°C to -8°C. Wind 2-18 kt from SW, except for the afternoon front that came from SE.
FL, Anders Svensson
The green flags set up next to the apron with the purpose of marshalling the skier to the right parking position for defueling.
The Camp Century movie belongs to a different historical era. See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ujx_pND9wg.