5d ago

Startup Claims Its Fusion Reactor Concept Can Turn Cheap Mercury Into Gold

Last week, Marathon Fusion, a San Francisco-based energy startup, submitted a preprint detailing an action plan for synthesizing gold particles via nuclear transmutation—essentially the process of turning one element into another by tweaking its nucleus. The paper, which has yet to undergo peer review, argues that the proposed system would offer a new revenue stream from all the new gold being produced, in addition to other economic and technological benefits.

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"But it’s worth noting that the same process would likely result in the production of unstable and potentially radioactive isotopes of gold. As such, Rutkowski admitted, the gold would have to be stored for 14 to 18 years before it could be labeled radiation-safe."
Ah yes, 18-year vintage, very nice choice. Pairs well with a 3 carat lab grown diamond!
- This is like a reverse Goldfinger plan. Could have an interesting impact on the gold market if it can be done at scale.
  I'm sure most gold mining operations take at least a few years to get permitted and started and then there's risk that you won't find as much gold as expected.
  Compared to a lump of gold that all you have to do is not lose it and it will appreciate in value all on its own.
  
  "All you have to do is find it."
  The value of gold is not just in its scarcity, properties, luster, purity, etc., but also in the effort it takes to find or mine it. So, sure. Trip over a nugget and you're...golden.
  The same concept can be loosely applied to the abstraction of crypto currency. It takes energy and computational effort to acquire if you don't just buy it.
  
  Could have an interesting impact on the gold market if it can be done at scale.
  Before figuring that out, they just need to develop a functioning fusion reactor. And since fusion energy is, as it has always been, a mere ten years off, it's probable that such reactors will take longer to be developed than it will take that radioactive gold to be safe to handle.
  
  In Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, there's an alchemist priest who is really interested in trying to make infinite gold. Not because he wants to get rich, but because he wants to collapse the market and eat the rich.
  It's been a long time since I read it, but I seem to remember that he's not as much of a hero as the above makes it sound. Though that series is pretty pro-early stage capitalism, so take that as you will.
- It's only irradiated gold if it comes from the Radioactive Startup Part of San Fransisco.
  Otherwise, it's just sparkling rock.
  
  No, my friend. Gold is an incredibly useful material, often not used because of price, unlike diamonds, which are mostly useful for abrasion/cutting.
- I was wondering how radioactive the resulting material would be. Twenty years is totally viable for a power plant. Reactors in the US have been storing nuclear waste on site for a lot longer than that.
- Just sell politicians the 14-year vintage, they love that.
any particle accelerator can do that just incredibly slowly.
Alchemy of that sort has been doable for generations, it's just WILDLY impractical!
- Currently many orders of magnitude more expensive than just buying an equivalent amount of gold, but makes me wonder what the future might be capable of with those proofs of concept.
  Science circling back around to alchemy is an interesting thought.
  
  If it is possible to make small amounts of those elements on purpose as a byproduct, it can help to offset the costs of the reactor in some small way and help with isotopic/nuclear research in general. But that can be done in pretty much any fusion reactor design to some degree.
  As for Alchemy of the future, If in a thousand years we can just built whatever materials we need (including potential ultra heavy stable elements) from raw subatomic particles we don't even need mining, just gather up some hydrogen/helium from space and transmute it into whatever you need. food, fuel, structures, etc.
  
  I admit, it wasn't on my 2025 bingo card, either.
This is stupid, but not for the reasons you would think.
The energy required to change lead into gold is bigger than their difference in price.
- The whole point of the paper is that limitation has been breached. The fusion plant would primarily create electricity, and gold is a profitable byproduct.
  It's not out of peer review, though.
- But this reactor turns mercury into gold, and is meant to produce power.
  
  Mhhh. Would have to check the binding energy per nucleon charts. Might work. I automatically read lead.
- LoL, why else would they be publishing a paper on the process rather than buying an absolute ton of mercury and manufacturing gold like mad?
  
  Because they have to build a full scale reactor first. That's expensive.
  The way this usually works is that you do the research, get a patent on it, license that out, and then capitalists pretend they invented the whole thing themselves and deserve all the profits.
Should change their name to Rumpelstiltskin Energy
- The devil told you that!
Good to see Gargamel following his dreams.
In theory but can they do it efficiently. Probably not. And definitely not yet. But hey let them get the fool's money.
- I read up on this the other day and their claims are 8 tons produced per gigawatt of energy consumed. Even if they manage a quarter. Of that, it's enough to obliterate the value of gold. I doubt this will actuary go anywhere either way but it would be nice to see.
  
  This article says (5 tonnes/yr) per GW produced. It's a fusion reactor, so it's making electricity, not consuming it.
  At $0.05/kWh, 1 GWh of electricity is $438 million. At $3400/troy ounce, 5 tonnes of gold is $545 million. So that jives with the company's estimate on the article that the sale of gold could double their revenue.
  All bunk, of course
  
  That's an enormous amount!
  Most of the value of gold these days is its use in electronics, and jewelery. I'm fine with it being made cheap and plentiful. Anyone holding gold (or gold-backed investments) as opposition to other types of investments is going to see a big loss, but that's what they bought into.
Alchemy you say? Take my money now, I'll ask questions later. Glad we got in on this before the peer review!
- Kings dont fund science, Kings fund alchemy!
  USA USA USA ...
- I'll wait and see if they can add some AI to it. But if they can, I'll invest my entire life savings.
You want gold? Tons of it? Go mine the asteroid belt. But if it is to become plentiful what value will it hold?
Will cheap gold plated circuitry be back?
- I'd love that. Corrosion would no longer be a concern.
Woo! Alchemy achieved.
Inb4 radioactive gold hits the market, leading to Geiger counters being standard in gold buying businesses.
It also creates some radioactive isotopes of gold, so it'd have to sit there for 12-14 years before being useful.
My guess is that once the radioactive cycle time is up, it'd create more gold than the economy knows what to do with, and the price would collapse. They're quoting 5 metric tons of gold created per GWh of electricity created by the fusion reactor. There are 3,000 metric tons of gold mined every year. Worldwide energy production is 26,000,000 GWh. If we had 20% of that on one of these fusion reactors, there would be 26,000,000 metric tons produced.
It's estimated that for all of human history, 244,000 metric tons has been mined.
Gold ain't that useful, and it isn't even that artistically desirable if it's common. I think we'd struggle to use that much. Maybe if the price drops below copper we'll start using it for electrical wiring (gold is a worse conductor than copper, but better than aluminum). Now, if the process could produce something like platinum or palladium, that'd be pretty great. Those are super useful as catalysts, and there isn't much we can extract from the Earth's crust.
If late stage capitalism hasn't played itself out by then, what's going to happen is similar to solar deployment now. Capitalists see that solar gives you the best return on investment. Capitalists rush to build a whole lot of solar farms. But focusing on just solar is a bad idea; it should be combined with wind, hydro, and storage to get the best result. Now that solar has to be turned off so it doesn't overload the grid, and that cuts into the profits they were expecting.
Same would likely happen here. The first investors make tons of money with gold as a side effect of electricity generation. A second set of investors rushes in, collapses the price of gold, and now everyone is disappointed. Given the time it would have to sit before it's at safe radiation levels, this process could take over 20 years to play out.
- 5 metric tons of gold created per GWh of electricity
  per GW. 5000kg over whole year of 1gw reactor going almost continuous. While there is no theoretical possiblity of creating economically viable fusion energy, a minimum reactor size would be 10gw. Needs 1gw of backup fission to provide stable power input, and make the deuterium.
  $500M/gw in gold revenue could make a difference in the economics. If fusion cost 2x what fission costs per gw, ($30/w) then it would make back its cost in gold only over 60 years, @$100/gram.
The search for the philosophers stone never ended.
- I really think I’m close, I just need to distill a little more urine
If we can actually do nuclear transmutation, that’s like one step away from a Star Trek replicator
- 6.4L of air produces 1 cm³ of iron. I guess that's not that bad. It's like three people filling their lungs with air.
so they can make gold for less than it costs now? why are they looking for investors?
- I did the same deep cut
How do I invest?!?!?!

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