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[Article] Marathon Fusion says it can produce gold as fusion reactor byproduct (newatlas.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/interestingshare@lemmy.zip

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The dream of the ancient alchemists may come true as Marathon Fusion announces that its tokamak fusion reactor technology can turn common mercury into gold as a byproduct of fusion operations in quantities that would make Auric Goldfinger blush.

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[–] JATtho@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

1st problem is that the mercury will highly likely poison the fusion plasma. The blanket is already a hard engineering problem to have it work in a "regular fusion reactor". 2nd problem nobody has said anything about is that you get a mixture of radioactive isotopes out of (a supposedly working) a transmutation reactor. This adds to required enrichment processes: to get 100% mercury-198 (from 10%) and possibly a purification of the freshly radioactive gold.

I'd imagine radioactive gold is pretty much worthless. The Au-197 is metastable, and to my flaky understanding will emit gamma-rays, not to mention the other isotopes generated around Au-197.