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.
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 fusion 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.
so they can make gold for less than it costs now? why are they looking for investors?
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.
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?
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.
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?
Who gives a shit about the gold price except for some idiots who think it has some inherent value beyond some applications in electronics.
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.
I would assume that this would lead to a rise in mercury mining instead of cleaning up Mercury contaminations, because that would probably be cheaper. And I don’t think mercury mining is any less toxic than gold mining.
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.
Should change their name to Rumpelstiltskin Energy
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.
How do I invest?!?!?!
Good to see Gargamel following his dreams.
So do it. Crash the economy, rip that bandaid right off.
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.
