Marathon Fusion, a San Francisco-based nuclear fusion startup founded in 2023, announced that it has successfully converted mercury into stable gold. The company utilized nuclear transmutation, bombarding mercury-198 with high-energy neutrons to produce stable gold-197. The process involves the creation of radioactive mercury-197, which subsequently decays into gold.
The company claims its conversion rate is 10 times higher than the previous record set by CERN. For comparison, the ALICE team at CERN measured approximately 29 picograms of gold produced during the Large Hadron Collider operations between 2015 and 2018. This gold decayed in less than a second.
Beyond gold production, Marathon Fusion has completed tests on a high-performance plasma centrifuge for isotope enrichment. The company is currently constructing a new generation of fusion equipment in San Francisco. Its long-term goal includes the mass production of precious metals and medical isotopes at future fusion power plants.
The startup is backed by investors including Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy and Anglo American. While the company focuses on fusion devices and medical isotopes, it presents gold production as a demonstration of its transmutation technology. Industry experts note that while transmutation is theoretically sound, challenges regarding yield and radiation control remain.
