Fukushima Nuclear Will Pilot Crypto Mining With Excess Energy

The company that runs the Fukushima nuclear reactor is trying out mining for cryptocurrencies.

Tokyo Electric Power Grid (TEPCO), one of Japan’s largest utility companies, is working with TRIPLE-1, a Japanese company that makes mining rigs, to make the most of the extra power on its grid.

After an earthquake and tsunami hit the nuclear reactors in Fukushima that the utility company was running without proper risk controls in 2011, it has been hard for the company to get it is business and reputation back on track. In the end, the government bought 50.1% of the company in 2012.

In September, TEPCO created a subsidiary called Agile Energy X. Its goal was to make digital value out of the utility’s extra power by mining cryptocurrency. In a press release on Wednesday, the two companies said they had signed a memorandum of understanding with TRIPLE-1, a local hardware company, to build distributed data centres across the country that use TRIPLE-1’s semiconductors to take advantage of extra renewable energy.

According to the press release, the project’s goal is to “make effective use of surplus power” by creating new demand for crypto mining and AI computation.

The three companies have already set up a demo project in Tokyo. It is a 1.5 megawatt (MW) data centre with 1,300 computers that look a lot like mining rigs in the photo posted with the press release.
In a report released this year, Japan’s Ministry of Energy said the country could make twice as much clean energy as it does now. In recent years, there has been a rise in renewable energy curtailment, which means more energy is wasted. Companies say connecting more renewable energy sources to the grid has been challenging because it is already full.

Despite all the trouble, TEPCO is still one of Japan’s biggest utility companies. Its market value is about JPY 820 billion ($6 billion), less than half of what it was before the Fukushima disaster. The company serves the eastern part of the island of Honshu, which includes the Tokyo metropolitan area.