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Startup Claims That Neutron-Based Fusion Reactor Technology Could Revolutionize Gold Production Worldwide and Boost the Global Energy Economy.
Since the times of alchemy, humanity has dreamed of transforming common metals into pure gold. For centuries, this ambition has been treated as fable or superstition. But now, a group of American engineers claims to have found a real and scientifically viable way to produce gold from mercury — using nuclear fusion.
The claim comes from Marathon Fusion, a Silicon Valley engineering startup that published a technical paper detailing the process. The proposal has not yet undergone formal scientific review, but it is already causing a stir among energy and materials science experts.
Nuclear Fusion and Modern Alchemy
The proposed method involves the use of high-energy neutrons produced in nuclear fusion reactors. According to the authors, these neutrons would be channeled to bombard the isotope mercury-198, which would then transform into mercury-197 — an unstable isotope.
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In a few days, this mercury-197 would undergo radioactive decay and become gold-197, which is precisely the only stable and naturally occurring form of gold. In other words: at the end of the process, there would be legitimate gold, chemically and physically identical to that extracted from mines.
How Does the Process Happen?
The secret lies in the so-called breeding blanket, a component that surrounds the plasma in fusion reactors and usually serves to generate fuel (tritium) from lithium. Marathon Fusion’s innovation is to add mercury-198 within this blanket, taking advantage of the abundance of neutrons generated during the fusion of deuterium and tritium.
These neutrons would activate the transmutation process — an ancient concept in nuclear physics, but rarely used for commercial purposes due to its complexity and cost.
Gold Production Could Be Billion-Dollar
According to estimates from the company itself, a single nuclear fusion plant of 1 gigawatt (equivalent to the size of a large conventional nuclear plant) could produce up to 5 tons of gold per year. At current prices, this represents about US$ 550 million (over R$ 3 billion) in gold per gigawatt annually.
In other words, in addition to providing clean and abundant energy, a fusion plant equipped with this technology could generate additional billion-dollar profits from gold sales, doubling its economic viability.
Energy and Mining Can Go Hand in Hand
The founders of Marathon Fusion emphasize that the process does not interfere with energy production or tritium generation, an essential fuel for the continuity of fusion. In other words, the system would operate in parallel, as a kind of “luxury byproduct” of energy generation.
Additionally, the researchers claim that the transmutation of mercury into gold is safe, scalable, and potentially replicable in all fusion reactors that adopt the same technical principle.
Fusion Reactors: Has the Future Already Begun?
The proposal gains even more relevance because the world is getting closer to mastering controlled nuclear fusion, considered the “Holy Grail” of clean energy. Projects like ITER in France and SPARC in the U.S. have already made significant strides towards functional reactors.
The idea of linking gold production to these next-generation systems could be the final push to make the construction of commercial fusion plants viable, as the financial return would become much more attractive.
Scientific Alchemy or Exaggerated Promise?
Despite the enthusiasm, the proposal still needs to go through rigorous validations by the scientific community. The original article has not yet been peer-reviewed and many technical details remain under analysis.
Scientists consulted by specialized outlets, such as ZME Science, agree that the physics of transmutation makes sense in theory, but warn of practical challenges, such as the cost of mercury, the complexity of systems, and the safe management of radioactivity.
Moreover, there are ethical and economic issues concerning the impacts of a possible gold oversupply, which could destabilize global markets and affect countries that rely on traditional mining.
New Proposal for a Fusion Blanket
The Marathon Fusion article also suggests creating a two-layer fusion blanket, with distinct fluids that would optimize the use of neutrons according to their energy. The inner layer would focus exclusively on gold production, while the outer layer would maintain tritium generation.
This modular approach would allow fusion plants to be adapted for multiple purposes, including the transmutation of other valuable or radioactive metals, turning them into true “atomic factories of rare materials.”
Is Alchemy About to Become Real?
The Marathon Fusion project may seem like science fiction or modern alchemy, but it has a solid foundation in contemporary nuclear physics. If confirmed, the method could revolutionize the way we understand both clean energy production and the mining of rare resources like gold.
More than just fulfilling a millennium-old dream of humanity, this technology could subsidize the mass deployment of fusion reactors, helping the planet achieve a sustainable energy matrix — and, who would have thought, with a touch of gold.
The article Scalable Chrysopoeia via (n, 2n) Reactions Driven by Deuterium-Tritium Fusion Neutrons can be accessed by clicking here.
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