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A Coal Power Plant is Being Reopened For Blockchain Mining (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Sure, you could mine bitcoin on that old PC in your garage, or you could use a whole power station to do it. That's the idea behind the Blockchain Application Centre -- an Aussie tech initiative that will see one of the country's now-shuttered coal-fired power plants reopened to provide cheap power for blockchain applications. It's the work of Australian tech company IOT Group, which has partnered with local power company Hunter Energy on the project. According to The Age, Hunter Energy will recommission the Redbank power station in the Hunter Valley, two hours drive north of Sydney. Once the power plant is reopened (expected to be completed within 12 months), it will offer wholesale or "pre-grid" power prices to blockchain companies, allowing them to do things like mining cryptocurrencies, without having to pay retail power prices.
So not onlly are we going to waste tons of electricity, we're going to pollute now too.
This is so pointless. All that energy, and all those computing resources, for nothing. What the hell is wrong with people?
God damn it, this fucking insanity has to stop. Not only has it impacted my ability to upgrade to a bitch'n graphics card but now they want to poison the air I breath for this shit?
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Bitcoin seems to be more loved by the Libertarian sect, which doesn't seem to give a damn about environmental causes and thinks that polluting businesses should "self regulate" themselves. Yeah... because that worked so well back in the 1950's and 60's.
It's too bad Australia seems to be run by fossils these days though, so that won't happen.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Huh, is this some sort of competition to find the dirtiest of money?
A think we need to update Drake equation and add a parameter for crypto mining.
This has got to be the most pants-on-head retarded nonsense I've heard yet. Is Australia vying for the title of 'most fucked up' with Florida or something?
I'm not a huge fan of coal and reactivating this plant for digital jerking off is about the stupidest thing humanity can do. But you can only get to "millions" of innocent people if you make some serious extrapolations and assumptions of lung afflictions and global warming causing mass deaths. Meanwhile on the other side of the equation is the "save a buck" which has a very measurable impact on saving lives in 3rd world countries. More people in the world die due to lack of access to electricity than due to any pollution side effects of electricity production.
In fact, people in poor countries are so desperate for cheap fossil fuels that there are tragic mass deaths as people try to scavenge spilled gasoline from tanker trucks where they go in risking their lives for a cooking pot worth of fuel.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
"We techies are so very environmentally responsib ... ooh, shiny bitcoin!"
1) That's a bad thing. The NICE part of bitcoin is that it's distributed. It's a feature!
2) It's WASTE heat dude.
But sure, they've been trying to harvest waste heat from power plants. I've heard some interesting ideas about using the heat gradient as a sterling engine and turning it into vibrations then converting that back into power.
They need to think about how to co-locate thermal power intensive industries.
They're going to co-locate where the damn coal is cheap. Where the land is cheap. Where the employees are cheap. Or do you think having a cheap bread baking oven is going to offset the cost of running a RAIL ROAD LINE from the coal mine to the coal plant? It's great that you're thinking about efficiencies. But this is a general issue with power plants that has been around a long time and there's a whole field of education dedicated to this stuff. It's like commenting that maybe NASA should think about how much air resistance rockets have to deal with.
Yeah, like gaming is 10 times better...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
A closer read of the article reveals that the idea (and it is still an idea) was conceived by an entrepreneur who, you guessed it, has a financial sake in getting that particular coal plant restarted.
Coal power in Australia is not competitive, for the reasons you state: a trade deal with China makes panels cheap, and unused land is cheap and there is sunlight going free. Even this plan is part of broader plan to transition to solar on site at the coal plant.
In Australia we are treated to the curious sight of having right wing 'economic dry' conservatives attempting to socialize the production of power to build coal plants because private industry - to whom they sold the plants, won't build more and keep shuttering old ones.