Ukraine seizes crypto mining equipment from nuclear power plant

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The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has seized cryptocurrency mining equipment from a nuclear power plant in the southern part of the country. According to a report by local outlet InterntUA, the SBU conducted a search on July 10 in one of the offices in the power plant where they found plenty of crypto mining equipment including video cards, hard drives and cooling units.

Ukraine considers the nuclear power plant a state secret and therefore, no computers are allowed inside. The authorities are pursuing criminal proceedings against the officials of the South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant who are believed to have been involved in the crypto mining.

The SBU conducted the search in office no. 104 of the administrative building on July 10. Here, they found and confiscated a motherboard, extension cords, power supplies, USB and hard drives and six Radeon RX 470 GPU video cards. They also found a metal bracket with three video cards and three cooling units.

In a separate search on the same day, the authorities also seized 16 video cards, seven hard drives, a USB flash drive and a router. The SBU also found and seized a CTC union media converter as well as fiber-optic and network cables which are also restricted from the power plant.

The GPU miners in use have become outdated in recent times as more advanced ASIC chips took over. The SBU are yet to disclose what cryptocurrencies were being mined.

Earlier this month, Malaysia’s principal electricity utility authority raided 33 SegWitCoin (BTC) mining operations which it accused of stealing electricity. As CoinGeek reported, one of the miners was using 1,500 Amps of unmetered electricity, with the metered electricity only standing at 3 Amps. The miners reportedly deployed electricity power directly from the distributor board to their mining equipment, bypassing the meter. The utility company stated that it had lost over $760,000 as a result of the electricity theft.

In May, a Chinese court jailed a 61-year-old woman for stealing electricity to mine BTC. The court also fined the woman $1,440.