Nuclear cryptocurrencies: Kazakhstan is thinking about it …
According to reports from the RT channel , Kazakhstan authorities are considering the construction of a nuclear power plant to cope with the rapid growth of cryptocurrency mining, which has seen the Central Asian country become a hub, but also suffer from energy shortages.
Speaking on Tuesday, Energy Minister Magzum Myrzagaliev revealed that the government is currently considering two locations for a thermal power plant that could help bridge the gap between production capacity and energy demand. At present, around 70% of the country's plants run on coal
Kazakhstan by the way is the largest producer of uranium ores in the world and has been considering building a nuclear power plant for over a decade.
The country began suffering from a power shortage in the summer of 2021, shortly after the Chinese government officially outlawed cryptocurrency mining. The miners have chosen to take their hardware to Kazakhstan, where electricity is cheap. This caused significant energy problems for Nur-Sultan, who was forced to buy electricity from Russia to bridge the gap between supply and demand. Energy often produced by nuclear power plants that exploit Kazakh uranium, so the solution appears logical and simple.
Recall that cryptocurrency mining, Bitcoin in the lead, uses a series of extremely energy-intensive special processors, which use energy to carry out the logical operations related to mining. China has kicked out these activities that were previously concentrated on its own territory.
Earlier this year, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a law to force cryptocurrency miners to pay additional fees for their electricity. The surcharge of one Kazakh tenge ($ 0.0023) per kilowatt hour will be added to any cryptocurrency mining operation. However, the new construction of nuclear power plants would also allow the country to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral, i.e. not emitting extra carbon, by 2060.
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The article Nuclear cryptocurrencies: Kazakhstan is thinking about it… comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/criptovalute-nucleari-il-kazakistan-ci-sta-pensando/ on Thu, 30 Dec 2021 13:30:03 +0000.