Nuclear fusion reactors can turn mercury into gold, US firm claims

A US engineering firm, Marathon Fusion, claims to have developed a scalable method to transmute mercury into stable gold using nuclear fusion reactors. Their approach involves bombarding the mercury-198 isotope with high-energy neutrons produced in a fusion reactor’s breeding blanket, converting it first into the unstable mercury-197 isotope, which then decays into gold-197—the naturally occurring stable form of gold—within days. This process leverages the neutrons generated during the fusion of deuterium and tritium, which normally produce helium and energy, by incorporating mercury into the fusion blanket to facilitate the transmutation. The company estimates that a one-gigawatt fusion power plant could yield up to 5,000 kilograms (about 11,000 pounds) of gold annually, potentially generating over $550 million in gold revenue per year without compromising energy output or tritium production. This could significantly enhance the economic viability of fusion power plants by subsidizing their deployment through valuable gold production. The paper also