The Ukrainian Ministry of Energy wants to use nuclear energy for crypto mining. Will the idea come into effect?
Using surplus energy
The Ukrainian Ministry of Energy, on 6 May, shared its opinion in favour of crypto mining with the help of surplus energy from local nuclear power plants by the stagnation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to them, such a solution may be the best idea to use surplus energy production.
Such steps would not only maintain nuclear power plants but would also provide companies with an opportunity to raise additional funds.
“This could open the way to a fundamentally new economy, new approaches and a new market model”.
Role swap
In July 2019, the Ukrainian Security Service investigated the placement of excavators by employees in the administration building of the nuclear power plant and their propulsion, thanks to energy from the local power plant network.
This is not the first time that workers illegally use huge amounts of electricity. The Iranian authorities have encountered a similar problem, locating crypto mines in the vicinity of mosques that have used free state energy. The mines there caused an increase in total energy consumption in the country by as much as 7%.
Drawing conclusions, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine began to seriously consider using nuclear power plants to stop wasting energy. As they say, this may prove to be one of the more effective solutions they can take.
Work in progress
A Russian crypto news outlet, Forklog informed us that the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy has approached Energoatom, which operates all four nuclear power plants in Ukraine and supplies more than 50% of the total energy, asking to explore potential ways to implement crypto mining with nuclear power plants by 8 May.
The plants were already used for crypto mining, but not on a national scale. In March of this year, New York’s private Greenidge Generation power plant, moved to Bitcoin (BTC) mining, generating about $50,000 of daily revenue.
The plant’s server farm uses 14 megawatts of Greenidge 106 megawatts. This is enough electricity to power more than 11,000 homes in the United States.
