An Unusual Way to End Up with a Whole Lot of Gold | Hacker News Reader

An Unusual Way to End Up with a Whole Lot of Gold

theatlantic.com

12 pointsfortran777 comments

The 1936 article in The Atlantic (linked in the modern article) is worth a read if only to appreciate the repeated metaphors likening natural phenomena and experimental techniques to weaponry: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1936/06/157-6/132...

I would say the narrative and allure is the real gold here, as it could lead to hefty investments. That said, if this proves viable, what would stop others from reproducing the process and good to plummet in value as a consequence of its high availability?

My reading was that, at best, the gold might be a minor by-product of a fusion reactor which was already paying for itself by generating electricity. And maybe an extra "Look, shiny!" pitch, to sucker dim investors with.

(If the cost of the fusion-made gold was (say) 400X the cost of old-fashioned mined gold - and you also had to wait 15 or so years for its radioactivity to die down - no bright investors who want to help scale that up.)

an earlier story suggested that there was little downside or risk to making gold in a fusion reactor, if a fusion reactor can be built that runs long enough to transmutate mercury into gold, which is something that no one is doing or can project a time line for, so this is harmless hype.......that was inevitable.....cause it's baked into the physics anyway

If I recall, one recator would produce something like 0.2% of the annual gold unearthed every year.

Also, can't be used immediately: there is a 16 years period before radioactivity comes down to a safe level.

So I'd say it can be introduced smoothly, and make the endeavor of of a reactor more lucrative while not destroying gold market.

The paper on arxiv[1] has a bit more actual information about how the gold would be produced.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.13461

https://archive.ph/XqK8R

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