The mining equipment found in the nuclear power plant used GPUs

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has discovered a cryptocurrency mining operation in one of the country’s nuclear power plants. They claim that the internet connection installed to facilitate the operation is a significant security risk for the plant. Local media said that confidential data on the operation of the nuclear plant was displayed online.

The agency concluded that the mining equipment was installed by officials responsible for the activity at the nuclear power plant.

According to a report published by local news agency Unian, the computer equipment was seized on the basis of two separate investigations of the power station located in Yuzhoukrainsk city.

Mining with video cards

Authorities seized six Radeon RX 470 GPU video cards, a motherboard, power supplies and cooling units installed in the South Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine on July 10.

All the equipment was located in a single office, in the administrative wing of the state-owned company Energoatom. The power plant is a security objective, which means that unauthorized computer equipment cannot be used in the institution. Recently, protests were held in Ukraine regarding the security of Energoatom-managed locations.

The same day, a branch of the National Guard of Ukraine discovered additional crypto mining equipment at the same nuclear plant. These included 16 GPU video cards, 7 hard drives, 2 drives and a router. No details were provided regarding the type of cryptocurrencies mined with these equipment.

Currently, GPU-based mining equipment is underutilized. These have been replaced by ASICs that have a much better yield.