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.

Comments

Yay Coal Power

[Anonymous Coward]

So not onlly are we going to waste tons of electricity, we're going to pollute now too.

Re:Yay Coal Power

[Oswald McWeany]

So not onlly are we going to waste tons of electricity, we're going to pollute now too.

Coal is the future. Coal powered power stations, coal powered cars, coal powered politicians. Dissing coal will get you sent to the gulag.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so pointless. All that energy, and all those computing resources, for nothing. What the hell is wrong with people?

God damn it

[jwhyche]

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?

Re:God damn it

[WindBourne]

I have to say that I am disgusted by this.
We really need to stop ALL new coal plants, or re-openings, from occurring. That should include ALL NATIONS.

Re:God damn it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think the reactions to this are based on left/right leanings, you may need to check your inner humanity. Polluting the every loving hell out of the Earth because you see a get-rich-quick scheme in front of you should be something we all mock, mercilessly, for the idiotic benchmark of greed mixed with stupidity that it is. I have to believe that anyone that doesn't understand that is lacking a fundamental ability to think through consequences.

Re:God damn it

[Applehu Akbar]

Are not coal plants heavily regulated for filters? It may release more CO2, but that isn't "polluting the hell" out of anything.

Today's filters do a good job of straining out particulates, but you still have gases. Not just the ever-popular CO2, but NOx and SO2, the stuff that creates smog in the Grand Canyon from Arizona's last remaining coal plant.

Re:Bitcoin, a Leftist phenomenon

[supremebob]

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.

Massive carbon tax would fix this

[presidenteloco]

It's too bad Australia seems to be run by fossils these days though, so that won't happen.

Re:Massive carbon tax would fix this

[thegarbz]

What do you mean these days? We were always proud of being in the big leagues of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the USofA when it comes to CO2 emssions per capita.

Sure we've dropped the ball the last 4 years but we want to retake our place above the USA.

Dirty money

[HeckRuler]

Huh, is this some sort of competition to find the dirtiest of money?

A new parameter for the Drake Equation

[sinij]

A think we need to update Drake equation and add a parameter for crypto mining.

Re:A new parameter for the Drake Equation

[fahrbot-bot]

A think we need to update Drake equation and add a parameter for crypto mining.

I didn't know he was into Math, but Drake might have to collect his Spotify royalties with a bitcoin wallet in the future:

That means musicians like Drake, Justin Bieber, and Rihanna, who were Spotify’s most streamed artists last year, need to get comfortable with the idea that their royalties are going to be tracked on a blockchain—and maybe even paid out on one—before the fantasy of music on the blockchain takes shape.

INFINTE FACEPALM

[Rick Schumann]

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?

Re:Oh right, the power question

[danbert8]

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.