RUSSIAN scientists have been arrested at a top-secret nuclear warhead facility for mining bitcoin through the use of the country’s most powerful supercomputers, it has been reported.

The unnamed suspects were arrested at the Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov, western Russia, which is a restricted area.

In a statement, the centre said: "There has been an unsanctioned attempt to use computer facilities for private purposes including so-called mining." The nuclear centre’s security department was alerted when the scientists attempted to connect the supercomputer to the internet.

The alleged criminals were then handed over to the Federal Security Service (FSB), according to the Russian news service Mash.

The press service told Interfax news agency: "As far as we are aware, a criminal case has been launched against them." The Federal Nuclear Centre is believed to employ up to 20,000 people and its supercomputers have a capacity of 1 petaflop, the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.