My Day Job

South Pole Station Center with the Logistics and Vehicle Maintenance Arches buried on the right.

Center in the photo is the South Pole station with the "Arches" to the right.  The arches are buried structures that contain the power plant, materials warehouse, 450,000 gallons of fuel storage, and the vehicle maintenance facility.

Widening the Ice Tunnels.

 One of the never ending projects is widening the Ice Tunnels.  Originally dug in the early 2000's, the tunnels have been slowly shrinking over the last 15 years.  The tunnels are not actually through ice, but rather really packed snow called Firn.  This firn has about 60% of the density of regular ice so the blocks are lighter.  The tunnels range between 30 and 60 feet underground and are designed so that a C-130 could land on top of them without collapsing.  The average temperature is between -50*F and -60*F and there are about 1300' of tunnels on the station that serve to transport water from the rod wells and sewage to the old wells.

The blocks are cut with electric chainsaws, then knocked out with sledgehammers.  The blocks are then loaded into sleds and pulled out with winches .

Hauling out the ice blocks on a sled.

Once the ice blocks are pulled out of the ice tunnels, they end up in the utility corridor. This corridor is where all of the utilities go from the power plant to the main building.  From here the blocks are dragged to the logistics arch, where they are hooked to a snowmobile and dragged outside.

Escape Ladder.

Due to the fact that the Firn is shifting at about 30' per year, we'll need to re-work some of the escape hatches.

Coldest Selfie Ever (-60*F).

Part of the challenge here is that most air monitoring equipment is only rated to -10*F so we have to come up with some pretty creative ways to make sure the tunnels are safe to enter.  The little plastic hose sticking out of my jacket is connected to a four gas meter that is reading the Oxygen, Carbon Monoxide, Hydrogen Sulfide, and Lower Explosive Limit of the atmosphere.  In addition to my body heat keeping the monitor warm,  the sample tube is wrapped in hand warmers to attempt to warm the air coming into the unit. The tunnels are cold and smell like poop, but I can verify that the atmosphere is safe to enter.


JNIII