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Residents of small Pennsylvania town are being driven mad by huge BITCOIN MINE whose two large cooling towers vibrate and hum more loudly than a waterfall

1 year ago 19
  • Neighbors of America's first nuclear-powered Bitcoin mine say it is loud enough to shake their homes 
  • The crypto-currency has soared in value since the 180-megawatt mine was plugged in this summer
  • But that is little consolation for sleep-deprived residents living nearby  

By Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com

Published: 19:40 GMT, 13 December 2023 | Updated: 21:11 GMT, 13 December 2023

Residents of a sleepy Pennsylvania town are demanding to know why they are being kept awake by a local mine when the only thing being produced are Bitcoins.

The Terawulf facility in Salem Township is the first Bitcoin mine in the country to run solely on nuclear power, generated by the nearby Susquehanna plant.

But vast amounts of electricity are needed to run computers that create the crypto-currency and the noise generated has driven some neighbors to despair.

'The gentleman that's house is the last house on Confers Lane, you could literally go inside his house, put your hand on the wall, and feel the vibration from the fans. it was that bad,' said Ernest Ashbridge III, vice president of Salem Township board of supervisors.

On Tuesday fed-up residents told the power boss they had endured enough of the endless noise.

The Terawulf facility in Salem Township is the first Bitcoin mine in the country to run solely on nuclear power , generated by the nearby Susquehanna plant

'It's terrible. The droning, you can't sleep at night, it wakes you,' said Stephen Bodnar who lives about a mile away from the operation.

'I have a little pond in front of my house where I used to sit and have my coffee at,' he added.

'I can't even enjoy that because I can't even hear the water over the Bitcoin. It is louder than the waterfall.'

Talen Energy won over locals with promises of hundreds of news jobs and an economic boom in the township of 6,000 when they announced plans for the operation last year.

'Amazon, Google, all those cloud computing applications, those are the potential clients, customers that we will have in the data center buildings,' said Dustin Wertheimer, VP and Division CFO Talen Cumulus and Susquehanna Data Center.

'On the coin mining side, there will be computers again located in those buildings and those computers will run computations that will trigger and generate the issuance of coins.'

The controversial cryptocurrency has been in the news again after a wild ride since the start of December.

A rally last week saw it rise above $44,000 to reach its highest level in almost two years - then on Sunday it lost 6.5 percent of its value in just 20 minutes and dipped below $41,000.

Global bank Standard Chartered thinks bitcoin could surpass $100,000 before the end of 2024 - yet well-known JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon said last week that US lawmakers should 'close it down'.

The first 1,500 Bitcoins out of Salem Township were sold for $37.6 million after the 180 megawatt mine was plugged in this summer, but that was little consolation to residents at an angry town hall meeting on Tuesday.

Bitcoin was trading for $44,000 on Friday - the highest it had been in 20 months - before falling back down to about $40,500 on Sunday evening. It has since partially recovered

The power company sent director of operations Alex Brammer to promise that they are already working on making things quieter.

'We're trying to do everything we possibly can to cut this down to as low as humanly possible,' he told them.

He said that most of the drone is coming from exhaust fans inside the building and promised a rebuild that will cut the noise in half by March of next year.

'Well, I'm happy that they're doing this and they act like they actually care so, the proof is in the package,' said Bodnar.

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