British defence contractor to work on top secret nuclear monitoring base

Serco lands £250m contract to build emergency power station at Greenland space base

Defence services firm Serco has landed a $320m (£250m) contract to build an emergency power station at a top secret nuclear monitoring base in Thule, Greenland’s northernmost town.
The deal will see Serco boost the capacity of a backup power plant at a US space base, where an array of sensors are in place to detect nuclear attacks from intercontinental ballistic missiles fired over the North Pole.
The four-year contract, awarded by the US Army Corps of Engineers, starts this month and will see Serco provide what boss Mark Irwin said will be a “mission-critical upgrade” in a “pivotal location”.
The Pituffik space base, established during the Cold War, also performs surveillance by tracking satellites and spacecraft as they orbit the planet.
Thule, named after the Latin word for the world’s most far-flung location, has a population of about 650 people, who are mostly military personnel from the US and Denmark.
Serco will undertake the refurbishment of the electrical generator and associated infrastructure together with future maintenance in conjunction with Danish construction company Aarsleff.
The settlement is located just 950 miles from the North Pole and endures darkness for half the year. Temperatures plunge below -20 degrees Celsius for months on end and climbing above freezing for only about 12 weeks. This makes reliable power supplies vital for those living in the area.
Though hemmed in by sea ice for much of the year, Thule also has the world’s northernmost deepwater port and a 10,000-foot runway that handles more than 3,000 flights a year, including military flights, business jets and local Air Greenland services.
The base was the site of a near disaster in 1968 when a B-52 bomber carrying four nuclear weapons crashed nearby.
Explosives in the warheads detonated and the atomic payload ruptured, causing radioactive contamination. The incident became known as the “Thule affair”.
The US base was renamed Pituffik – meaning “the place the dogs are tied” – only last year.
American explorer Robert Peary based himself in the area during expeditions in the early 1900s, during which he claimed to become the first person to reach the North Pole.
Serco’s defence business also manages military housing, helps move Royal Navy vessels with a fleet of dedicated tugs, provides engineering support for RAF Chinook helicopters and is responsible for applying specialist paint finishes to Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes.