Fusion startup has learned to make gold from mercury profitably and in large quantities

Alchemy is no longer a pseudoscience, and it is used to write scientific papers and propose technologies. It made fusion possible.

A fusion energy startup claims to have learned how to do what alchemists have dreamed of for thousands of years: turning other metals into gold, reports Financial Times. In a scientific article, published last week, Marathon Fusion offers use neutrons released in fusion reactions to gold production using a process known as nuclear transmutation. The article has not yet been peer-reviewed, but has received positive feedback from some industry experts.

Previously, scientists have synthesized gold using particle accelerators, but the quantities were minuscule and the costs were extremely high. This year, physicists at CERN announced that observed the transformation of lead atoms into gold in the Large Hadron Collider.

Marathon’s proposal is to inject the isotope mercury-198 into the reproductive layer and use the high-energy neutrons produced during the fusion process to convert it to mercury-197, an unstable isotope that then decays to gold-197, the only stable isotope of this metal, within about 64 hours.
The inventors claim that future fusion power plants will be able to produce 5,000 kg of gold per year per gigawatt of electricity, without reducing output or other complications of power generation At current prices, this amount of gold would cost about the same as the electricity generated, potentially doubling the plants’ revenue.

The difficulty is that the presence of other mercury isotopes is likely to lead to the formation of unstable gold isotopes alongside gold-197. This means that the metal may be partially radioactive, meaning that the gold will have to be stored for 14 to 18 years to be considered completely safe.

Marathon was founded in 2023 by CEO Kyle Schiller and CTO Adam Rutkowski to solve the technical problems of building fusion power plants. The startup currently employs 12 full-time employees and has raised $5.9 million in investment and about $4 million in grants from the US government. Initially, the team worked on improving the efficiency of the fuel combustion system at a fusion power plant, and began considering nuclear transmutation earlier this year, Rutkovsky said.