Marathon Fusion, based in San Francisco, claims that gold can be created as a byproduct of the fusion process used by nuclear reactors. The company stated that over three days, the ‘nuclear transmutation’ process turns mercury-197, an isotope produced during fusion, into gold.
"This marks the beginning of a new Golden Age, not only for the production of critical minerals, but also for energy, prosperity, and scientific discovery," the company stated.
The gold is supposedly indistinguishable from mined gold chemically and physically. There is one catch – a ‘cool down’ period of between 14 and 18 years for short-lived radioactive impurities to decay.
“Put simply, the method is similar to one proposed to allow reactors to manufacture their own tritium fuel. This is done by lining the reactor vessel with a layer of lithium,” writes David Szondy for New Atlas.
“When the lithium absorbs a neutron from the fusion reaction, it splits into an alpha particle and a tritium atom. If you replace the lithium with the very common mercury-198 isotope (or better yet, a lithium/mercury alloy), a fast neutron will turn it into unstable mercury-197. This then undergoes an electron decay that turns into (ta da!) gold-197. Oh, and there's tritium as well, if you're using the alloy.”
“In a recent preprint paper still awaiting peer review, Marathon scientists suggest using mercury that has been enriched to 90 per cent of the desired isotope for the best reaction results. After being exposed to the reactor, the amalgam can be treated chemically to separate the gold. Since gold is a nearly inert noble element, this is a relatively simple process.”
Marathon Fusion was founded in 2023 by Adam Rutkowski, a former engineer of Elon Musk's SpaceX.
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