[Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0]

> the National Mine Safety Supervision Bureau has reported three recent coal mine accidents, including an April 10 “water penetration accident” in Xinjiang that caused 21 people to be trapped.

> Significantly, the Xinjiang and Sichuan regions of China combined account for more than 50 percent of the overall Bitcoin mining hash rate

This is horrific on so many levels, I’m not even sure where to begin. My heart goes out for those poor miners slaving away for... what?

[gruez]

>My heart goes out for those poor miners slaving away for... what?

coal?

[bpodgursky]

... to appease Germany's environmentalists who saw shutting down working nuclear plants as a major win.

(Yes, I know it's a different source of coal. But energy, in the age of oil tankers and thousand-mile pipelines, is fungible.)

[derriz]

What? This makes zero sense. Germany gets 24% of electricity from lignite/coal - down from 45% 6 or 7 years ago.

[bpodgursky]

This is a sloppy counterfactual, because that number could, and should, have been close to zero already!

Yes, things are improving slowly. Yes, it is still crappy compared to the smart play.

[graeme]

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Coal and nuclear are fairly interchangeable. Since nuclear was shut down and some coal remains, it’s fairly clear Germany chose coal over nuclear for the medium term.

[derriz]

I'm guessing because it's an impossible counterfactual to suggest that an advanced industrial country could fully replace/de-carbonize 70% of their electricity production in the time span under discussion. Suggesting impossible counterfactuals doesn't advance the discussion in any way.

And Germany did not "chose coal over nuclear". While they have reduced nuclear production by about 30 TWh in the last 7 years, they have slashed coal-based electricity production by far more - 140 TWh - in the same period.

And it's not like Germany is bucking some trend with respect to nuclear - nuclear has been in decline globally since its peak in the mid 1980s.

[derriz]

Forgot to add to my reply - why is Germany being singled out? China burns 15 times as much coal as Germany - even the USA burns 3 times as much.

[pizzapill]

Germany is replacing nuclear/coal with wind/solar energy:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei:Energi...

(grey = wind, red = nuclear, black/brown = coal)

Both nuclear and coal are shrinking since ~ 2000 and both sources of energy have been replaced by renewables since then. Currently ~40% of power produced in Germany comes from renewables. Wind energy has become #1 source of power from 0 twenty years ago.

[tarsinge]

Germany mix is still very dirty compared to some neighbors[0], it’s a fact that they chose politics over CO2 reduction (choosing to close all nuclear power plants overnight as a reaction to fukushima when the renewable capacity was not there and rely on coal until 2038). Wether you are pro nuclear or not it’s an environmental catastrophe.

[0]https://www.electricitymap.org/map

[pizzapill]

> it’s a fact that they chose politics over CO2 reduction

True but the timeline is:

2002 - Ban of construction of new nuclear reactors and limitations on the normal operating life of existing reactors to 32 years. Last shutdown ~ 2021.

2010 - Government wants to increase the limit of some newer reactors to ~2030-2035.

2011 - Fukushima. 77% of Germans are against a increase of the operating life of the remaining reactors, 48% want all turned off immediately. Government (in a election year) goes with the opinion of a vast majority of Germans.

So the current exit was planned since 1990-2000. Municipal power plants have planned for increase in demand and invested billions. The need for renewables increases spending & investment enormously (after our wise government killed of solar in the early aughts and handed technological leadership to China).

With this years election the Green party will probably be the second most powerful party in Germany. A party that was founded with the goal to end German reliance on nuclear power and bombs.

[ekianjo]

Nope Germany is massively relying on nuclear energy produced by its neighbors.

[pizzapill]

2002 was the last year Germany imported more power than it exported:

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/153533/umfrag...

[idownvoted]

Ah Sweet, the old “exportweltmeister” scam never seems to get old.

Germany is exporting so much energy because (and only because) without the base load provided by conventional power plants it’s energy grid routinely is on the brink of collapse, whenever there are weather based shifts in renewable energy production.

This causes the electricity price to routinely go negative because our neighboring countries don’t want to have it either.

What a failure. And what a failure that people still fall for that exportweltmeister lie

[cygx]

There's always something. Did you know that nuclear-power producing France comes close to crashing the grid basically every other winter? See eg https://www.cre.fr/Actualites/RTE-fait-appel-aux-industriels... for the announcement from 2019, but I remember reading articles about this at least as early as 2012.

[tarsinge]

This is because a lot of French households use electrical heating (because it was encouraged by the government to use the huge sovereign electrical capacity), so cold put a huge stress on the grid. This is not related to nuclear power per se.

[bob29]

No. Literally Germany's coal is specifically because its their own coal, a natural resource within their own borders they control. For national security, they maintain a coal capacity. Germany's coal burning is national security, nothing to do with environmentalists.

[bpodgursky]

Arguments about Germany's energy independence would be far more compelling if they were not, for example, currently building giant pipelines to import Russian natural gas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream

[foepys]

That's mostly for heating, though. Heat pumps are being increasingly used in new homes but nearly all homes older than 10 years are using gas or oil furnaces. Electricity prices are also very high, amongst the highest in the world, so heat pumps aren't as cheap to run as in other countries. It's definitely a problem that needs to be fixed, potentially within the next 30 years because that's the timeframe where the law requires old furnaces to be replaced.

[bpodgursky]

But electricity would be cheaper... offsetting imported natural gas... if they left the nuclear power plants on.

[herbst]

They literally break down cute little towns and pay them pennies to relocate to increase the coal mining holes. Germany really is somewhat strange in this

[saddlerustle]

About a third of the coal burned in germany is imported

[ulfw]

National Security. Really?! So you use up a limited resource during peace times to have less of it during war times? Is that your logic?

[AYBABTME]

What kind of sovereignty do you have if a powerful neighbour can put your people to freeze in the winter by cutting your energy supplies, forcing you to accept their conditions? National security is more than weapons.

[kaba0]

How about a reliable power source that is many many times more efficient per mass than coal, so you don’t have to import it that often?

[thatguy0900]

Well, you probably already want working staffed coal plants when the war starts.

[bpodgursky]

It seems far easier and cheaper to keep the nukes running and just stockpile, like, a suitcase worth of uranium.

[taneq]

> those poor miners slaving away for... what?

Bitcoin, apparently.

[gruez]

Where does it say bitcoin? The quote:

>three recent coal mine accidents, [...] that caused 21 people to be trapped.

[delecti]

There are a few steps in between, but if the chain of events really is: coal mine accidents > coal shortage > power blackouts > drop in bitcoin mining, then the end result is effectively they were indeed slaving away for bitcoin.

[gruez]

I think you got cause and effect reversed. The correct chain of events is: coal miners slave away to produce coal, which is generally burned to produce heat. Part of that heat is used to run turbines to electric generators[1], and part of the generated electricity is used for bitcoin mining. Does this mean they're slaving away for bitcoin mining? I guess, but only partially. Saying they're slaving away for bitcoin mining is as correct as saying they're slaving away for steel smelting.

[1] there are other uses, like for cooking or for heating a house

[elefanten]

Without the bitcoin driven demand, there would be less pressure to mine faster than feasible and fewer accidents.

The pressure would still be there... but there are cost-related reasons the mining is colocated with the power generation.

Seems a reasonable guess that this virtuous cycle of coal-and-crypto mining synergy resulted in some soylent externalities.

[Thorrez]

I guess we should think about what percent of the power was used for bitcoin mining. If only 1% was used for bitcoin mining that it's pretty hard to say that bitcoin mining was the cause.

[athrowaway3z]

If i had to model this i wouldn't say

> Without the bitcoin driven demand, there would be less pressure to mine faster than feasible and fewer accidents.

I don't buy that demand has suddenly exceeded the operators capacity, forcing them to trades safety for production. I would assume the pressure is constant and trading safety for production is done for profit.

So in effect:

Without the bitcoin driven demand, there would be less miners leading to less accidents.

[delecti]

I suppose inherent in my argument that they're slaving away for bitcoin is how lowly I view bitcoin.

[rfoo]

No. I'm a native Chinese and from my understanding (read between lines and talking to local friends), the situation is:

1. Coal mine accidents.

2. Someone said "stop mining, make sure all the mine pass security check". Of course they mean coal mining.

3. Government officers confuse "mining coal" and "mining Bitcoin", decided to stop both just because they both have a "mine" word in name.

It's quite hilarious how they can be so wrong.

[oefrha]

According to the Twitter thread quoted by TFA, https://twitter.com/doveywan/status/1382912887535005701, non-crypto data centers in the region are down as well, which really doesn’t support this reading between lines.

[rfoo]

The Twitter thread you linked said exactly opposite thing.

Take a look at this one: https://twitter.com/DoveyWan/status/1382955030995554304

The Chinese text in this screenshot basically says:

"Some ISP datacenters were required to shut down and prepare for inspection. Others, because of the local government for 'reducing risk', they want to avoid the spotlight, so they shut down themselves. And then wait until inspection team from central government[1] leave, after that they restart"

That "Some ISP datacenters" in the first sentence were shut down because they do hosting for Bitcoin mining.

If you don't trust me, here are the copy-pastable replication of the original text. It is not very machine-translatable because it is spoken Chinese gone through WeChat's speech-to-text. Verify with someone you trust who can understand Chinese.

有些 isp 机房的话是那个他们要求停就配合检查，然后有一些是当地的政府为了规避风险吗？不想出风头，然后的话自己关的，然后的话，等他那个中央巡视巡视组走了之后的话再重新开启啊这样。

[1] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%AE%E5%B7%A1%E8...

[fspeech]

Doesn't bitcoin mining run on cheap surplus electricity? If they shut down the coal mines the power generation will eventually be impacted. They likely want to shut down bitcoin mining before impacting supply to other users, as bitcoin miners operate in the grey area.

[loceng]

So it's either incompetence (a mistake) or a cover for plausible deniability?

[vkou]

> My heart goes out for those poor miners slaving away for... what?

A paycheck, typically.