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.
See related article: Weekly Market Wrap: Bitcoin up over 21% in best weekly performance since Feb. 2021. Bull run or bull trap?
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.
See related article: 2023 Should be the Year of Web3 Security