The U.S. will open its first nuclear-powered data center offering Bitcoin mining in the first quarter of the year. The Cumulus Susquehanna data center in Pennsylvania has been completed by Cumulus Data, a subsidiary of independent power producer Talen Energy.



See related article: Weekly Market Wrap: Bitcoin up over 21% in best weekly performance since Feb. 2021. Bull run or bull trap?



Fast facts




The data center is expected to start hosting nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining and cloud computing services in the first quarter of 2023, the first such service in the U.S., World Nuclear News reported.



In August 2021, Talen Energy partnered with U.S.-based Bitcoin mining firm TeraWulf to develop the Nautilus Cryptomine, a zero-carbon Bitcoin mining facility, on Cumulus Data’s campus.



TeraWulf is in “the initial stages of ramping its mining operations” and expects the nuclear-powered data center to “provide 50 MW of net mining capacity to TeraWulf” in the first quarter of 2023.



The 300,000-square-foot data center is powered by Susquehanna’s 2.5-gigawatt nuclear power plant.



The Bitcoin mining difficulty rose 10.26% last Monday to a new all-time high of 37.59 trillion, as numerous U.S.-based mining firms came back online after winter storms forced them to shut operations.



Bitcoin dipped 0.5% in the past 24 hours, trading at US$22,790 at 10 p.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinGecko data.




See related article: 2023 Should be the Year of Web3 Security