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.
Startup Claims Its Fusion Reactor Concept Can Turn Cheap Mercury Into Gold
Submitted 2 months ago by UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://gizmodo.com/startup-claims-its-fusion-reactor-can-turn-cheap-mercury-into-gold-2000633862
Comments
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
any particle accelerator can do that just incredibly slowly.
Alchemy of that sort has been doable for generations, it’s just WILDLY impractical!
Stovetop@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
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.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Humans sometimes run out of things to want.
ClanOfTheOcho@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I admit, it wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card, either.
Gladaed@feddit.org 2 months ago
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.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
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.
Allero@lemmy.today 2 months ago
But this reactor turns mercury into gold, and is meant to produce power.
Gladaed@feddit.org 2 months ago
Mhhh. Would have to check the binding energy per nucleon charts. Might work. I automatically read lead.
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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?
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
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.
aviationeast@lemmy.world 2 months ago
In theory but can they do it efficiently. Probably not. And definitely not yet. But hey let them get the fool’s money.
Sabin10@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
antler@feddit.online 2 months ago
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
SheeEttin@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
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.
MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Good to see Gargamel following his dreams.
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Alchemy you say? Take my money now, I’ll ask questions later. Glad we got in on this before the peer review!
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Kings dont fund science, Kings fund alchemy!
USA USA USA …
EnsignWashout@startrek.website 2 months ago
I’ll wait and see if they can add some AI to it. But if they can, I’ll invest my entire life savings.
baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Should change their name to Rumpelstiltskin Energy
hakunawazo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
kokesh@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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?
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
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.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
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.
kokesh@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That would be great. But what I’m talking about is the collapse of the price of gold.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Who gives a shit about the gold price except for some idiots who think it has some inherent value beyond some applications in electronics.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
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.
kokesh@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I want to sell my gold teeth 😐
simsalabim@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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?
Tiger666@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
But what about alchemy?
Etterra@discuss.online 2 months ago
So do it. Crash the economy, rip that bandaid right off.
TachyonTele@piefed.social 2 months ago
The search for the philosophers stone never ended.
QuantumSparkles@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I really think I’m close, I just need to distill a little more urine
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 months ago
When they can do transparent aluminum, I’m in!
Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Aluminium Oxide (Al~2~O~3~) can be crystal clear too, it’s just Sapphire, I have a chunk of it on my wrist right now, looks pretty clear to me, and almost as hard as a diamond.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
a lot longer than that.
Synthetic corundum, spinel and others have been around for over 120 years, and optically transparent uncoloured sapphire glass for over 80 years. They are just aluminium oxides.
ALON is just the new hotness, and not as good as some others in terms of visible light transparency.
Godort@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
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?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I’d love that. Corrosion would no longer be a concern.
ileftreddit@piefed.social 2 months ago
If we can actually do nuclear transmutation, that’s like one step away from a Star Trek replicator
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
6.4L of air produces 1 cm^3^ of iron. I guess that’s not that bad. It’s like three people filling their lungs with air.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Woo! Alchemy achieved.
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Inb4 radioactive gold hits the market, leading to Geiger counters being standard in gold buying businesses.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
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.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
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.
m3t00@piefed.world 2 months ago
so they can make gold for less than it costs now? why are they looking for investors?
barnaclebutt@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Damage@feddit.it 2 months ago
barnaclebutt@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I did the same deep cut
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 2 months ago
How do I invest?!?!?!
Atropos@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“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!
ch00f@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
“All you have to do is find it.”
The value of gold is not just in its 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.
Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
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.
chirospasm@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
It’s only irradiated gold if it comes from the Radioactive Startup Part of San Fransisco.
Otherwise, it’s just sparkling rock.
elucubra@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
No, my friend. Gold is an incredibly useful material, often not used because of price, unlike diamonds, which are mostly useful for abrasion/cutting.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 months ago
I was wondering how radioactive the resulting material would be. Twenty years is totally viable for a power plant.
Wazowski@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Just sell politicians the 14-year vintage, they love that.