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.
“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.
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.
Well getting more energy out of a fusion reactor than you put in is the really hard part, if you’re just doing it to make gold I imagine it’s easier
maybe you could use an h-bomb to do it, those have been around since 1951
Well that’d be fusing hydrogen, so an Au-bomb maybe. Or Hg-bomb?
Or contain the explosion inside a chamber with some mercury in it 🤣
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.
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.
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.
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.
Should change their name to Rumpelstiltskin Energy
Good to see Gargamel following his dreams.
Alchemy you say? Take my money now, I’ll ask questions later. Glad we got in on this before the peer review!
I’ll wait and see if they can add some AI to it. But if they can, I’ll invest my entire life savings.
Kings dont fund science, Kings fund alchemy!
USA USA USA …
Why do we try to turn things into gold? The price of gold would collapse if we succeeded, so wouldn’t it be completely pointless?
I dunno. I would be cool with it if we stopped mining for Gold with all the environmental problems and found a way to profitably clean up the mercury from past gold mining and places like Grassy Narrows with extensive mercury poisoning.
That would be great. But what I’m talking about is the collapse of the price of gold.
Since fiat currencies are not connected to gold… no problem?
If you have a monopoly on the process, then its the same as the DeBeers Diamond Cartel. You can keep the price up by limiting the sale and spending a ton of money on marketing.
Besides the shift to mercury mining others have already listed, you really think that this process is cheaper than mining gold and also cleaner and safer at the same time?
But what about alchemy?
What’s wrong w/ collapsing the price of gold? Gold is super useful since it doesn’t oxidize, so it’s fantastic in electronics and space stuff. Making that cheaper would be awesome.
I want to sell my gold teeth 😐
When they can do transparent aluminum, I’m in!
edit: yes I know there’s a ceramic material called ALON, which the manufacturer calls transparent aluminum because it contains aluminum oxynitride, but I don’t think that’s what Scotty meant. ALON is about 30-35% aluminum, same as the amount of lead in leaded crystal glass, which isn’t “transparent lead”.
Transparent aluminum was around in 2018 source
Woo! Alchemy achieved.
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.
Inb4 radioactive gold hits the market, leading to Geiger counters being standard in gold buying businesses.
