300MW crypto mining facility is building on the US nuclear power plant

As Data Center Dynamics reported, Talen Energy, a US power company, plans on building a 300MW crypto mining facility and data center beside its nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

The crypto mining firm Cumulus Coin, a subsidiary of Talen Energy, expects the project to come online at the beginning of 2022 with the 164MW first stage. The project goal is to reach 300MW of capacity by completion and the ability to expand to 1GW in the future.

As Talen told Data Center Dynamics, the wider data center facility near the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station “will provide low-cost, reliable, carbon-free power to the data center clients on campus. This allows clients to benefit from carbon-free, 24/7 power being supplied directly to the campus, without the intermittency that renewable energy can experience, or requiring fossil fuels.”

According to Talen Energy, the necessary permits to prep the site for groundbreaking are already obtained on the township and state levels. So the firm has applied for permits to start construction on the first building on the Susquehanna Hyperscale Campus as soon as possible.

In a recent report, the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index says that Bitcoin mining consumes around 105 Terawatt-hours of electricity, which exceeded the overall consumption of some countries.

“As the demand for energy increases among data center and cryptocurrency processing clients, so does the call for decarbonizing these energy sources,” a Talen spokesperson said.

Cryptocurrency mining in various world regions is transferring to cleaner energy alternatives such as geothermal and hydroelectric power. For instance, the Albany Engineering Corp in New York said they could make more money mining cryptocurrency at its nearly 200-year-old hydroelectric power plant than providing power to its energy grid.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/oh-good-someones-opening-a-nuclear-powered-crypto-mining-facility/