- Bitcoin Mining Company TeraWulf has rolled out a new mining facility in Pennsylvania that runs solely on nuclear power.
- The first-of-its-kind U.S. mining facility plans to energize 16,000 mining rigs.
Maryland-based bitcoin mining company TeraWulf inaugurated its Nautilus Cryptomine Facility on March 6th, 2023. The Nautilus facility will be the first behind-the-meter bitcoin mining facility in the United States.
With rising concerns around the potential environmental impacts of bitcoin mining, TeraWulf revealed its commitment to utilizing clean energy in its mining operations.
The company will power the facility solely from an on-site 2.5 gigawatts (GW) nuclear generation plant to facilitate this.
Going Nuclear
TeraWulf first announced construction for the Nautilus Cryptomine facility in August 2021. The initiative is a joint venture with Texas-based power generation company Talen Energy Corporation.
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The 180 megawatts (MW) Nautilus Cryptomine is the first phase of the joint venture, built on Talen’s digital infrastructure campus in conjunction with its nuclear power generation station. This foundation will allow the mining facility to source energy on-site without utilizing the grid.
According to the facility’s website, the Nautilus Cryptomine is expected to reach 300 MW when complete, placing it among the largest mining facilities in the region.
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TeraWulf has signed a $0.02 per kilowatt hour (kWh) power agreement for five years, which will see its energy costs average out to $0.04/kWh across its two facilities. By contrast, the U.S. industrial average is $0.09/kWh, according to reports.
Speaking on this, Paul Prager, Chairman and CEO of TeraWulf, claimed:
“The Nautilus nuclear-powered mining facility benefits from what is arguably the lowest cost power in the sector, just $0.02/kWh for a term of five years,”
TeraWulf’s official statement disclosed that the company is targeting a total online capacity of 50,000 miners and is projected to provide approximately 5.5 ExaHashes per second (EH/s) across its two sites by early Q2, 2023, with an estimated power demand of 160 MW.
At press time, the 180 MW Nautilus facility has 8,000 mining rigs up and running, providing a hash rate capacity of approximately 1.0 EH/s.
The mining company shared that it plans to power up an additional 8,000 rigs in the facility by May to bring the hash rate capacity to 1.9 EH/s and revealed that it would explore the deployment of an additional 50 MW of bitcoin mining capacity in the Nautilus facility in future.
On the Flipside
- On 22nd November 2022, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed a two-year fossil fuel-powered Proof of Work (PoW) mining moratorium into law, making it the first state in the U.S. to do so.
- Bitcoin’s mining difficulty hit an all-time high of 43.5 Trillion on 25 February 2023. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s hash rate difficulty currently sits at 356.47 EH.
Why You Should Care
Concerns about the potential environmental impacts of bitcoin mining have significantly increased in recent years, especially when the leading network’s mining difficulty and hash rates are hovering around all-time highs, indicating that there is still significant demand for bitcoins.
The current state of the network and the rising environmental concerns has seen calls for mining operations to shift to more eco-friendly methods. TeraWulf’s initiative is significant in leading by example with its commitment to a 100% zero-carbon, energy-powered mining facility.
Read about other Bitcoin mining projects powered by clean energy:
Bitcoin Mining in Malawi Connects More Families to the Grid
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