Actual alchemy? Tech startup explains how it turns ordinary things to real gold

Marathon Fusion, a startup based in California, has put forward a bold idea: using nuclear fusion reactors to make gold from mercury. The concept is based on transmutation, the process of turning one element into another, something that has been studied for centuries but never achieved at a useful scale.

The company’s method uses deuterium–tritium fusion, a type of reaction that produces very fast neutrons with energies of about 14 million electron volts. In a fusion reactor, these neutrons are usually used to help create tritium fuel to keep the reaction going. Marathon Fusion suggests putting them to double use. By directing the neutrons at mercury-198, an isotope of mercury, they can trigger what is called an (n, 2n) reaction. This turns mercury-198 into mercury-197, which then naturally decays within a few days into gold-197, the only stable form of gold.

The company says this process can be built into the blanket of a fusion reactor, the part that surrounds the plasma and captures neutrons to generate heat. Because the (n, 2n) reactions also multiply neutrons, the system would not interfere with electricity production and would still meet the strict requirement of producing enough tritium fuel for the reactor.

According to neutronics simulations described in its research paper, a tokamak reactor with this setup could produce about 2 tonnes of gold per gigawatt-thermal each year. Marathon Fusion’s own modeling goes further, estimating that a plant could generate around 5,000 kilograms of gold annually for every gigawatt of electricity produced, which is roughly equal to 2.5 gigawatts of thermal power.

The company argues that this could make fusion plants twice as valuable, since the gold produced could be worth as much as the electricity they generate. It also suggests that the same approach could be used to create other useful materials, such as palladium, medical isotopes, and components for nuclear batteries.

Still, there are big hurdles. No commercial fusion reactors exist yet, and building one that works continuously is one of the hardest problems in energy research. Scientists still need to figure out how to keep the plasma stable, design materials that can survive the extreme conditions inside the reactor, and develop systems that can reliably extract power. On top of that, any gold produced in this way would start out radioactive and would need to be carefully managed before it could be used.

The physics behind the idea is sound, but until a working commercial fusion reactor is built, the proposal remains theoretical. For now, the idea of making gold from mercury in a fusion plant is an intriguing possibility, but not something that can be put into practice yet.

Source: Marathon Fusion

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