Gold’s eternal allure has driven epic quests through history, its scarcity sparking dreams across civilizations. Marathon Fusion, a San Francisco-based startup, has unveiled a way to make gold as a byproduct of their fusion reactor, 5,000 kilograms per gigawatt of clean power per year.
The core of Marathon’s innovation is a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped fusion device that heats hydrogen isotopes—deuterium and tritium—to over 100 million degrees Celsius, fusing them into helium. This reaction produces a flood of high-speed neutrons. Most fusion systems use these neutrons to split lithium for tritium fuel, but Marathon, led by Adam Rutkowski and Kyle Schiller, proposes using mercury-198. When neutrons hit this isotope, something amazing happens.
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The process is beautiful. Mercury-198, with 80 protons and 118 neutrons, absorbs a neutron in an (n, 2n) reaction, emitting two neutrons and becoming unstable mercury-197. Over about 64 hours, mercury-197 undergoes electron capture, converting a proton into a neutron, and becomes gold-197—the only stable gold isotope, with 79 protons and 118 neutrons. Marathon estimates a gigawatt-scale reactor could produce 5,000 kilograms of gold per year, worth about $600 million at current prices.
Marathon’s approach involves lining the tokamak’s “breeding blanket” with mercury-198, possibly with lithium to sustain tritium production. Neutrons trigger the reaction, and the resulting gold, a noble metal, is chemically separated relatively easily. But some mercury isotopes produce radioactive gold, which takes 14 to 18 years to decay. Still, Marathon sees the payoff as worth it.
This is alchemy’s ancient dream come true, trading mystical rituals for plasma physics and equations. Marathon’s paper has not been peer reviewed yet, but fusion reactors could become the modern Philosopher’s Stones, producing not just energy but wealth. This is the spirit of discovery that once drove alchemists, now grounded in real science.
In a crowded fusion space, with Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion Energy going for the infinite energy, Marathon is the only one that’s going for the gold. Their reactors could power cities and produce gold, palladium or medical isotopes, and change the economy. This idea of machines that produce treasure and energy is the stuff of dreams, and fusion will redefine both power and wealth.
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