Ever since the discovery of alchemy, or since humans thought gold was a precious object, a worldwide quest to turn common elements into the yellow metal has been ongoing. Folklore and fables sing praises of humans who went on this quest and those who received such blessings. No such claims have yet stood the test of science, and this could change quite soon. An engineering firm from the United States – Marathon Fusion – has claimed that making gold from mercury is possible, and they state that nuclear fusion will play a key role in the process. The Silicon Valley-based company’s founders claimed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper. In the paper, the authors say they have found a “new scalable method to synthesize stable gold from the abundant mercury isotope using reactions in a specialized neutron multiplier layer of a fusion blanket.” The paper discusses high-energy neutrons produced in nuclear fusion reactors to transmute mercury into gold. The process involves bombarding an isotope of mercury-198 with neutrons inside a fusion reactor. This would result in a new isotope, mercury-197, which is less stable and will decay into stable gold-197 within a few days. The naturally occurring form of the yellow metal is gold-197. The majority of the nuclear fusion system, including tokamaks, relies on fusing deuterium and tritium- heavier forms of hydrogen. This reaction results in the production of helium, high-speed neutrons, and a vast amount of energy. In a normal cycle, the neutrons are stored in a breeding blanket, which is designed to help in future fuel cycles. A breeding blanket is a critical component which surrounds the plasma and helps it achieve tritium self-sufficiency by breeding tritium fuel from lithium.

Full report : U.S energy tech startup, Marathon Fusion claims it can make gold from mercury while generating energy.