Gold: The Atlantic Reports Effort to Produce Gold Through Nuclear Fusion Appears Possible

California’s latest gold rush will be atomic according to Marathon Fusion, a San Francisco company that is designing breakthrough nuclear fusion according to a report in The Atlantic which first reported on the possibility in 1936.

Marathon is focusing on how to produce more of the critical fuel for fusion reactors, tritium, which is extremely rare.

In a fusion reaction where typically the focus has been on production of energy, tritium is both used and and equal amount is produced. While that sounds fantastic, and it is, for nuclear fusion to start producing energy at scale, more tritium needs to be produced at lower cost.

Marathon Fusion is aiming to find the golden solution to the tritium production challenge by using an abundant metal, Mercury-198, to add the additional atomic building blocks to produce more tritium during fusion reactions that will allow for a scalable, safe, and environmentally sound production of energy at scale.

And the other very valuable byproduct of adding Mercury-198 to tritium nuclear fusion reactions is gold.

Not a small amount of gold either but gold on a scale not produced since the early 20th century in California. The value of producing tons of usable gold through this relatively stable, environmentally sound process is not to be understated enormous with at industrial projections rising well above $400 million annually.

The Association of Western Employers will continue to track the development of new technologies in energy, space, artificial intelligence and manufacturing along with the economic trends that promise to vastly expand the ability of every employee to build a career.