U.S.’ first nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining center to open in Q1

The U.S. will open its first nuclear-powered data center offering Bitcoin mining in the first quarter of the year. The Cumulus Susquehanna data center in Pennsylvania has been completed by Cumulus Data, a subsidiary of independent power producer Talen Energy.

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Fast facts

• The data center is expected to start hosting nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining and cloud computing services in the first quarter of 2023, the first such service in the U.S., World Nuclear News reported.

• In August 2021, Talen Energy partnered with U.S.-based Bitcoin mining firm TeraWulf to develop the Nautilus Cryptomine, a zero-carbon Bitcoin mining facility, on Cumulus Data’s campus.

• TeraWulf is in “the initial stages of ramping its mining operations” and expects the nuclear-powered data center to “provide 50 MW of net mining capacity to TeraWulf” in the first quarter of 2023.

• The 300,000-square-foot data center is powered by Susquehanna’s 2.5-gigawatt nuclear power plant.

• The Bitcoin mining difficulty rose 10.26% last Monday to a new all-time high of 37.59 trillion, as numerous U.S.-based mining firms came back online after winter storms forced them to shut operations.

• Bitcoin dipped 0.5% in the past 24 hours, trading at US$22,790 at 10 p.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinGecko data.

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