Marathon fusion claims to invent alchemy, making 5000 kgs gold per gigawatt

It requires mercury-198 as an input. The only quote I could find for mercury-198 is about $15K per milligram.

So now we just need to figure out how to make mercury-198 cheaply.

Unfortunately gold generated in this way would be radioactive. They calculate they would have to store the gold for over 13 years to not require labeling as radioactive waste, or over 17 years to reach the level of radioactivity of a banana.

I bet it would still be less valuable than regular gold even after that. It could still be identified, and people would discriminate against it. People are funny about nuclear waste, and likely wouldn't accept arguments like "it's perfectly safe" and "it's less radioactive than a banana".

Isaac Newton must be spinning in his grave.

I dont trust a site that simultaneously says "we are performing a once in a century technical feat" and "we can only say great things about this like we are selling something and not mention potential pitfalls".

Even if this were true, at 0.15 USD/kWh it would cost more than just buying the gold. Even excluding cost of cleaning up the radioactivity, the equipment, labor, everything except the power.

A GW-year is 8760 GWh. That's 8760/5000 = 1.75 GWh per kg of gold. At 0.15 USD/kWh, a GWh costs $150k US. So 1.75GWh costs about $263k. A kg of gold costs about 100k US.

Fuck, yes, this is the future I want. Great job guys, keep at it!

Also—I appreciate the alchemical aspects. A nice aesthetic for a future vision.

OK, I looked at their web site and couldn't find how they were supposed to be reaching fusion. Can anyone here point me in the right direction?

To be clear, this is something that would be wrapped around a fusion power plant (capturing neutrons produced by fusion), not a viable fusion plant itself nor a way to generate gold from just any power plant, right?

> previously a […] PhD candidate in Plasma Physics at Princeton University

The advice is generally not to advertise yourself as having been a PhD candidate: you're basically advertising that you couldn't complete a PhD. (Insert obligatory caveats about academia having problems, and failure to complete a PhD not implying that somebody is incapable.)

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Silver stackers win again /s

Tl;dr - they wrote a paper