Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Earth Bitcoin Power

Why a Waste-Coal Power Plant is 'Burning for Bitcoin' (post-gazette.com) 97

Posted by EditorDavid from the coins-from-coal dept.
While some bitcoin mining operations are now looking to nuclear power, the Associated Press reports, Bill Spence (and his company Stronghold Digital Mining) is creating crypto-mining hubs out of waste coal power plants. (Text-only version here): The plant he had bought was in trouble. It was competing with cheap natural gas on the power grid and losing — endangering the 35 jobs at Scrubgrass Generating Station along with the effort to clean up millions of tons of leaching coal waste left behind by mining companies over the course of decades. The plant couldn't just rely on the grid for revenue anymore, because the grid simply didn't need its power all that often. Mr. Spence started to look for other customers...

Already, some power generators — finding they can make more money supplying electricity to Bitcoin-mining operations than selling it to the grid — are shifting focus. Energy Harbor, which owns the Beaver Valley Nuclear Plant in Beaver County, announced earlier this month that it will supply nuclear power to a Bitcoin-mining data center in Ohio. Talen Energy, owner of the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Luzerne County, is doing the same. The company said last month that it will develop a data center to mine digital currency that could use up to 300 megawatts, or 12% of the nuclear plant's capacity. Bitcoin miners, in turn, are hyper cognizant of power prices and availability. Some are taking mobile units into the oil fields, hooking up their machines to run on natural gas, a byproduct of oil product that would otherwise be flared...

Today, Scrubgrass, an 85-megawatt blue box with a black smokestack in the hills of Scrubgrass Township, looks much like it did when it first opened in 1993 — except for the trailers filled with Bitcoin miners in the back... [T]here are about 3,000 cryptocurrency miners packed into retrofitted shipping containers behind the power plant, most of them owned by Stronghold and some that belong to other mining companies that buy power from the plant. Another 5,000 machines are scheduled to arrive next month. According to documents filed with the SEC, Stronghold is planning to operate 57,000 miners by the end of next year. In 2020, when the power plant seldom ran, Stronghold made more money from its Bitcoin operations than by selling Scrubgrass's energy to the grid. During the first three months of this year, the trend reversed. It received almost $2 million from power sales and more than $1 million from its crypto datacenter...

Stronghold is buying another waste coal plant, Panther Creek Energy Facility in Carbon County, with plans to replicate its cryptomining data center there, and is eyeing a third.
The Associated Press notes that the waste-coal plants are powered by those thousands of acres of abandoned (and pollutant-emitting) coal piles left behind by earlier coal-powered plants, finally remediating them into reclaimable land. But with waste coal plants, there's always a trade-off.

"In 2019, the last year with available federal data, Scrubgrass emitted the equivalent of 371,000 tons of CO2 — the greenhouse gas footprint of 80,000 cars driving for a year."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Why a Waste-Coal Power Plant is 'Burning for Bitcoin' More

Why a Waste-Coal Power Plant is 'Burning for Bitcoin'

Comments Filter:

  • Because we externalize costs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday August 07, 2021 @08:55PM (#61668269)
    We heavily subsidize the production of coal by externalizing the costs such as minors with black lung and the negative effects of the air pollution. There's also still quite a few direct subsidies.

    If Bitcoin miners were paying the actual costs associated with their electricity the whole scheme never would have got off the ground. Not that I'm opposed to subsidizing electricity but I do think we should regulate who uses it at the subsidized rates.

    • Re:Because we externalize costs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Saturday August 07, 2021 @09:13PM (#61668303)
      Screw subsidizing coal. Subsidize clean and renewable options instead. Coal's been subsidized for too long as it is, making coal generation prices artificially low thanks to lobbyists who didn't want the clean and renewable options to be competitive until the fossil fuel companies could capture and control them through buyouts.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
        So the problem is Coal and fossil fuels in general create a lot more long-term jobs than renewables. You just don't need that many people to run a wind farm or a solar farm. Coal jobs also tend to be centralized and important political districts. We need to change our society functions on several levels to get away from that. Maybe not full on post capitalism something much closer to what the kiddies called Democratic socialism. But we can't even get single pair of healthcare in America. Heck even communist
        • There's only one job that a coal miner is suited to so the solution is obvious. We pay them to stay at home and play minecraft.
        • The total number of people employed by the coal mining industry is less than the number employed by Google. It would probably be cheaper just to pay them all to do nothing than deal with the consequences of continued coal use.

          • It would probably be cheaper just to pay them all to do nothing than deal with the consequences of continued coal use.

            But a job/work is more than just about money. A job provides someone with: status; something to occupy their time; a feeling of being able to provide for their family; ... If someone does not work what are you going to do to provide replacements for what a job brings ? I do not know the answer.

          • The total number employed today is. Coal mining used to be a major employer - a mine could have a staff of many thousands, working at the coal face with picks and driving trucks. Enough to sustain a small town. Then heavy machinery improved. One many holding the control panel for a hydraulic drill machine can do the work of a lot of men with picks, and the trucks got bigger. Much, much bigger. As the need for miners disappeared though, the cultural memory remains: There are a lot of communities and families

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by iwbcman ( 603788 )

          Your contention that renewable energy creates a lot less long term jobs than the existing fossil-fuel energy system would appear to be based on us reduplicating the same kind of concentrated for-profit ("capitalist") system which we are fighting with today, in the future.

          There *is* no reason why this should be attempted or done, other than to reward those who already hold all the capital. One of the many appeals of renewable energy has been precisely the opportunity to find a far more socially just and dem

          • You're correct that something like the green New deal would create a massive number of jobs, but there's two problems with it.

            First, the only one pushing it is the left wing and they suck at everything they do. So in the preamble bill that laid out what green New deal would do instead of focusing on jobs jobs jobs they threw in some crap about diversity and racial Justice. You can talk about that on the campaign trail but putting it in the bill created a chink in the armor that the right wing immediatel

            • Frankly I love the idea of the worker's co-op and have been pushing that idea for a few years. To replace what used to be Sears, Roebuck and a decent middle-class job: Work at the co-op on the side to make the things that Sears used to have, and get paid in vouchers or scrip for the same goods and produce.

              In the same way I favor a workers political party and union (combined) much like the original Labour was in the UK about 90 yrs ago.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It says 35 jobs at this coal plant. Most are probably in administration, a few people operating the plant. If things go wrong they get in a contractor, not worth keeping them on payroll.

          Seems to compare pretty well to renewables, e.g. wind. Admin overhead is going to be similar, maybe a bit more as there is some forecasting involved. Instead of a small number of generators with high output you have a large number of generators with low output, so there is more monitoring and maintenance work. Of course ther

      • Re:Because we externalize costs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ath1901 ( 1570281 ) on Sunday August 08, 2021 @04:29AM (#61668867)

        I'm against all forms* of subsidized power for commercial purposes. There's just no reason why we should subsidize some inputs but not others. Electricity is a required input just like manual labour, screws, chairs etc. All it does is create market distortions and inefficiencies with people paying indirectly for things that could have been done better.

        I think TFS (I refuse to read TFA) again shows how stupid Bitcoin is. It requires huge amounts of energy despite almost no one using. It really shows why it is necessary that we pay the *full* cost to prevent these stupidities. If the tax on coal included things like negative health effects, the cost of removing the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere etc, then we could theoretically undo whatever harm they are causing but right now it is a hidden cost for society that they are making money from.

        *Actually, because of AGW, I'm all for subsidizing the building of renewables etc as long as they outcompete fossil fuels. I would not like to subsidize renewables used only for Bitcoin mining since that is the same as just giving tax money to miners. But, I don't know if that can be legally prevented and maybe we just have to live with that. We are in a shitty situation right now and radical measures are needed, no matter how market distorting they are. I'd rather see a global carbon market where a global cap is set and everyone is forced to buy emission rights (or sell carbon capture) but that was suggested 20 years ago and some people (*cough* USA) were against it.

        • "shows how stupid Bitcoin is" - To me not really, there is enough money in bitcoin mining that they are able to use power sources that would otherwise go to waste.

          I guess we both would prefer those trailers to be full of servers that run something like AWS spot instances (doing "real" work vs mining a crypto currency). If anything Bitcoin mining is trailblazing power sources for data centers (Google's Carbon-Aware Computing already does stuff like this for renewables, shifting workloads as needed).

          I can't s

    • Re:Because we externalize costs (Score:5, Funny)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Saturday August 07, 2021 @10:02PM (#61668375)

      > such as minors with black lung

      I'm pretty sure child labor was outlawed long ago. But if fark politics has some insider information I would be willing to take a look.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

      If Bitcoin miners were paying the actual costs associated with their electricity the whole scheme never would have got off the ground.

      The Bitcoin protocol is designed to scale in proportion to the mining resources that are available. If electricity was more expensive, there'd be less people willing to mine, but Bitcoin wouldn't go away.

      I hate pointing to China as a shining example of anything done correctly, but if you want to stop the wastefulness of crypto mining, you basically have to just ban the activity. Yeah, some people will still get away with it just as with copyright infringement, fraud, ransomware, and similar computer crime

    • Not that I'm opposed to subsidizing electricity

      You should be opposed. Subsidizing energy consumption is profoundly stupid. If the goal is the "help the poor", a far better solution is to just give them money and let them choose for themselves what they spend it on. Hopefully, they will spend it on something other than energy. Perhaps food or medicine.

      but I do think we should regulate who uses it at the subsidized rates.

      This is yet another reason to oppose subsidies: It is used as a pretext for idiotic regulatory micromanagement.

      • If the goal is the "help the poor", a far better solution is to just give them money and let them choose for themselves what they spend it on.

        The problem with just giving people money is that the free market adjusts itself to prices the market will bear. Gone grocery shopping lately?

        This isn't to say subsidies can't end up having the same effect, where a company decides to just jack up their prices because good ol' Uncle Sam is going to make up the difference. But in actual implementations, there are usually some price controls as part of the implementation to prevent exactly that. No such limitations exist when you just give people money and

    • Most of the coal produced in the USA is exported to China, that is if what I heard on talk radio is correct. That is making coal "external" in more ways than one.

      I'll see so many people complain about "external costs" from fossil fuels. We pay for those one way or another so I'm not sure how "external" they can be. For much of human history the "cost" of burning coal was surviving the winter. Even today the pros of coal still outweigh the cons. As bad as coal is there is an alternative that is worse, f

      • The issue isn't miners using cheap power - they do - but that this plant produces power that is too expensive to be sold on the open market. But if all you own is a coal plant and you can turn some profit mining Bitcoin, that is what you do, as you can't magically turn it into a wind farm and make more profit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jezwel ( 2451108 )

        Internalizing the external is a myth, it can't happen.

        We start by forcing companies to create a fund for land rehabilitation, where that fund can't be touched by the company or creditors. You can also add a carbon tax, which has been proven to reduce the amount of CO2 generated as the dirtiest plants are shutdown and investment shifted to renewables.

        It ain't perfect, but it's better than doing nothing.

        • It ain't perfect, but it's better than doing nothing.

          Sometimes doing nothing is the better option. Also, this isn't a binary choice. A better option than taxing carbon and hoping for something better to come along is to actively develop something better. If we tax carbon and nothing better comes along then all we did is depress the economy with an energy tax.

          I believe doing nothing is better than forcing energy costs higher artificially.

          I thought solar power was already cheaper than coal. If so then we do not need to do anything more but let the market ad

      • Most of the coal produced in the USA is exported to China, that is if what I heard on talk radio is correct. That is making coal "external" in more ways than one.
        Extremely unlikely as China is one of the worlds biggest coal exporters.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kriston ( 7886 )

      Burning waste coal, or culm, does not cause black lung. The material is already on the surface as waste from prior burning.

  • But WTF

  • Burning waste coal doesn't make the waste go away (Score:5, Informative)

    by mrclevesque ( 1413593 ) on Saturday August 07, 2021 @09:14PM (#61668305)

    "Burning waste coal doesn't make the waste go away. If 100 tons of waste coal are burned, 85 tons will remain as waste coal ash. Since far more mercury and other toxic contaminants enter a waste coal burner to produce a given amount of electricity, these high levels of toxic contaminants have to come out somewhere. Toxic metals cannot be destroyed by burning them. "

    https://www.energyjustice.net/... [energyjustice.net]

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Exactly. We'd be better off dumping the coal in a landfill.

      And really that's what should happen. Close the mines, pay the miners to reclaim the land, including re-burying any remaining coal.

      We need to have all coal plants shut down ASAP, and the absolute shutdown deadline needs to be no more than 10 years away.

    • Re:Burning waste coal doesn't make the waste go aw (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Saturday August 07, 2021 @10:20PM (#61668401)

      It depends on if they have scrubbers on the exhaust. If they do not, then the mercury and sulfur and other what not blows downwind. If they do have scrubbers, the low levels in the coal get concentrated into a much smaller volume as the exhaust goes through the scrubber that is easier to dispose of.

      If you leave the tailings on the ground, then you pollute the local ground water, so that is clearly not a good idea either. A landfill just delays the inevitable release into the ground water. If you do it right the leakage out will be slow enough that natural dilution and sedimentation will keep the concentration below harmful levels.
       

      • "If they do have scrubbers, the low levels in the coal get concentrated into a much smaller volume as the exhaust goes through the scrubber that is easier to dispose of..."

        Pollutants released into the air: Sulfur dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen oxides (NOx), Particulates, Carbon dioxide (CO2), Mercury and other heavy metals, Fly ash and bottom ash. [1]

        Scrubbers don't fix the problem, they can reduce SO2 by about 80%, NOx by about 20%, Mercury by about 50% for waste coal. [2] [3] It's harder to scrub waste coal bec

        • Sorry. That is a myth.
          Stubbers remove basically from everything far over 99% out of the exhaust.
          Fly ash does not really exist since decades.

          • "Sorry. That is a myth. Stubbers remove basically from everything far over 99% out of the exhaust."

            In the real world an average 80% reduction of SO2 is realistic. The most recent and expensive scrubbers used in near ideal conditions can reach 98-99%. But for other contaminants it's nowhere near that amount even in ideal situations.

            So the numbers from my references still seem about right.

            • Then Germany is not in the "real world" :P

              • " Then Germany is not in the "real world" "

                You made me look. You're right. Looks like with the right equipment, a willingness to spend, maintain it and get all the best, for SO2, NOx and fly ash you can reduce them by "up to 98-99.5%. If someone can do it right I wouldn't be surprised that Germany is. Not sure Bill Spence has the same intention.

                But for heavy metals not sure much more can be done than what I linked to above.

    • Comparing the amount of coal burnt in America with the amount of ash reportedly produced, you generate something like 20 tons of ash from 100 tons of coal. Which honestly strikes me as rather high - I thought there'd be a lot less impurities in coal.

      And the article says what they do with ash - mostly add limestone when burning it to make the ash alkaline, and spread it on an area that is acid to neutralize it. After all, this plant is as much about remediation of an old industrial site than it is energy gen

      • "you generate something like 20 tons of ash from 100 tons of coal. Which honestly strikes me as rather high..."

        It does seem high, but according to the EPA for 2014 that's not too far off. For the 130 million tons of coal ash generated that year in the US, about 800 million tons of coal were burned.

        https://www.epa.gov/coalash/co... [epa.gov]

        https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

      • "And the article says what they do with ash - ... this plant is as much about remediation ..."

        Yes, potentially there are a lot of environmentally sound ways of dealing with coal ash, but there are also a lot unsound ways in use too, with various levels of costs for corporations, the environment, and the public, associated with each one.

    • Coal is radioactive. Coal plants, subject to wind directions, have a radioactive zone around the stacks.Decades of burning mean it is already contaminated, so that additional burning is nothing much, really. Hopefully the bitminers use the free reserves, and convert the plant to gas or nuclear. It is still economic to buy a Russian nuclear sub and reactor and cart it overland, replacing a burner.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kriston ( 7886 )

        It is still economic to buy a Russian nuclear sub and reactor and cart it overland

        I'd *love* to see the cooling apparatus for such a project.

      • Only some coal is.
        Most is not.

        I doubt in your jurisdiction it is allowed to spread radioactive waste ... but who knows?

  • China booted them and Crypto needs to die..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Proudrooster ( 580120 ) on Saturday August 07, 2021 @10:14PM (#61668397) Homepage

    Crypto is a giant money wasting, energy wasting, scam that exists for cybercriminals to get paid after they ransomware your NAS.

    Crypto needs to die, it was fun while it lasted, but game over.

    • What would kill crypto mining is energy too expensive to bother. Or is it too cheap to bother? Whatever it is the cure may be worse than the disease.

      There would not be a crypto mining problem if electricity was low in CO2, reliable, plentiful, low in environmental impact, domestically sourced, and ultimately low in cost. We can get there from here.

      We just need to build things to get there.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by vivian ( 156520 )

        There would not be a crypto mining problem if electricity was low in CO2, reliable, plentiful, low in environmental impact, domestically sourced, and ultimately low in cost. We can get there from here.

        You are incorrect. The algorithms are explicitly designed so that they drive towards resource scarcity.

        The algorithm will just scale in difficulty to consume all cheaply available power and computing resources, until it approaches the value of the coins being mined.
        The only way to reduce the waste is to reduce the mining reward.

        • Re:China booted them and Crypto needs to die..... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Kaenneth ( 82978 ) on Sunday August 08, 2021 @02:01AM (#61668717) Journal

          "The only way to reduce the waste is to reduce the mining reward."

          Good thing that's built in to Bitcoin from the very beginning. "halvenings"

          Bitcoin is only polluting because it's valuable.

          Using energy does not give Bitcoin value.

          Bitcoin's high value as a medium of exchange on a free market causes energy to be burned to collect the block rewards. But those rewards automatically reduce over time, eventually reaching zero.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by antus ( 6211764 )
            Too little too late though. All cryptos need to switch to proof of stake (or some other alternative) which does not waste power to drive the network. And these kind of emissions destroying the planet we collectively own and live on need to end, ASAP.
      • I'd argue the crypto killer will be when the fed stops printing money and raises rates. Of course that is going to let the air out of the stock market too. And they are not going to let that happen. Inflation is here and not going anywhere, regardless of the fed's "transitory" statements. They have a tough choice ahead. Deflate the bubble and hold inflation, or VZ, Greece, ... inflation levels and keep the bubble.

  • We should be building more nuclear power plants. Mass produced 4th generation nuclear power is likely a decade away with prototypes just starting construction now. That is unless there's a big change in federal policies and a pile of cash from billionaires.

    What we can do now is ramp up 3rd generation nuclear power. It's an evolution from what's been mass produced 50 years ago and made in only ones and twos since about 1990.

    Crypto miners might not be interested in nuclear power, unless it's perhaps saving

    • Nuclear power is normally thought of as suitable only for base loads, because it's hard & slow to change their output from moment to moment.

      However... if nuclear power plants were sized for PEAK loads, had nearby colo datacenters available for miners, and sold surplus power "at cost" (mainly, taking advantage of cryptomining demand to soak up power they'd have to do SOMETHING with), the problem would be neatly solved. We could use cheap nuclear power for EVERYTHING (sized for 95-99% peak loads), and soa

      • We don't have the uranium ores available to make it possible, on a world scale, to do what you propose and have it be energy positive. Uranium mining is a nasty business and crypto mining is not a good use of resources. Even if uranium wasn't an issue, then there would be better things to use excess power for.

        • We don't have the uranium ores available to make it possible

          Uranium isn't the only fissile fuel available.

          Thorium. It is abundant and current;y considered a "waste" material of Rare Earth metal mining. The average RE mine brings up 5000 tons of Thorium a year, enough to fuel the world for a year.

          A quick intro; Thorium in 4 minutes [youtube.com]

          and if you really want to get educated Thorium Remix [youtube.com]. It is about 2 hours long but goes into how Thorium could be used as a nuclear fuel and it's benefits in great detail.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            We don't have the uranium ores available to make it possible

            Uranium isn't the only fissile fuel available.

            Above was mentioned Gen 3 and 4. Uranium is the fissile material for Gen 3 and 4.

            Thorium.

            And requires more development for a putative gen 5.

            and if you really want to get educated

            I know the background. Again my point is: not currently deployed technology for mass adoption.

        • Even if there were only enough to do it on large scale in the US, China, and India, it would still make a meaningful difference, regardless of whether anyone else used it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            China and India are already investing in nuclear in a significant way.

            • I know. You argued that it couldn't be done on "world scale". My counter-argument was that it doesn't HAVE to be "world-scale". The US and China in particular are both more than capable of producing as much processed uranium as they want, without having to get anyone else's permission or cooperation to do it. Even if the rest of the world stopped using nuclear power, just making power generation in the US and China 95-99% nuclear would make a huge dent in global carbon emissions, without requiring anyone in

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

                I know. You argued that it couldn't be done on "world scale". My counter-argument was that it doesn't HAVE to be "world-scale". The US and China in particular are both more than capable of producing as much processed uranium as they want

                I'd agree with you there. I think those pushing it on a world scale makes sense because there would be too many resource-related blockers, at least not on the scale many suggest such as 50% of all production. You might get to 20% on a global scale, up from the 10% of today and make it sustainable. In any one country scaling up to 90% of production probably isn't viable any more either. It made sense for France in the 1970s as it was dependent on oil for electricity production which was expensive (and spiked

    • Yep, I'm a broken record but then so is the doom and gloom on Slashdot.

      What would change you from a broken record would be if you recognised the optimism which ultra-cheap solar and ultra-cheap wind are causing as the prices of electricity from these sources collapse far below that of Nuclear and the fact that many of your counterparts on Slashdot have been projecting that. Currently there isn't space for more nuclear on the grid since even the most flexible of 3rd generation Nuclear plants will require much more storage capacity which we just don't have right now. We've been

      • Please start to show us material which shows that the nuclear industry has identified the causes of previous failure and worked out how to mitigate against its over-optimism. Please show us actual data from large scale, long running plants which show that safety and price effectiveness can be delivered. Given past failure to live up to promises, demanding anything less would be irresponsible, and so, if you want to avoid us thinking you a "broken record" please help us to believe in you.

        You want to see proof 3rd generation nuclear is profitable before we build them? How can that be done without building them? Do you see the problem yet?

        We didn't ask wind and solar to prove to be viable before dumping billions (or is it trillions now?) of dollars into them in research and development. Development means we build things. We built nuclear power at such a slow rate, and each reactor so different from the last, that each one is effectively a first of a kind. With NASA they asked people deve

  • It's horrifying seeing this on the same screen as the stories about the Gulf Stream current teetering on shutdown, just one of many of our planet's life support systems presently on the brink. Good luck monetizing a mass extinction! Bitcoin's sure to mean f***-all to remnants around the polar regions a century from now.

  • You can turn the coal into biochar and remediate soils

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]

  • Destroy the planet, and waste power on magical internet currency. jfc.

  • Bitcoin is just a convenient receptacle for righteous and hypocritical indignation. It's amazing to see the fury expressed by people whose greatest contribution to reducing emissions is separating their recycling into paper and plastic.

    The scale of bitcoin mining is directly related to the cost of electricity. Electricity is dirt cheap because the externalities of electricity generation (environmental impact) are not included in the price. I saw a discussion on a prior thread about electric cars and how t

  • Transforming waste into money was the goal from the get-go, so why the indignation?

  • Surely something could be done to make these coal-fired plants from being re-used for ridiculous activities such as bitcoin mining. Hell, old, polluting automobiles that were traded-in during the cash-for-clunker campaign were rendered unusable. Why not consider something similar for these old power plants?
  • Pale blue dot, Pale blue dot, Pale blue dot.

  • What would happen to cryptocurrency if the power to mine it got cut off? I'm not talking today but in 5-10 years when crypto becomes the standard tool for trading value for value if you'll pardon the Ayn Rand reference. Would crypto mining be distributed around the globe enough that the loss of a plant like this would have no effect?

  • It's just a CANCER on our entire civilzation. Used mainly for crime, and now is contributing in major ways to human-caused climate change. Just fucking outlaw it already!
  • Basically, the law needs to state that any power plant that is shut down will be replaced by something cleaner (unless it is below a certain limit) AND it must be capable of providing power for at least a day i.e. it must have storage if it is intermittent power.

  • It opens with the proposition the coal plant was on the market at all because natural gas was cheaper. The most profitable option for the miner is going to be the cheapest power. Is this guy some magic wizard about running coal plants or something?

Slashdot Top Deals

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

Close