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Infinite energy for all is cancelled.
Infinite wealth for the shareholders will go ahead instead.
“If," [“the management consultant”] said tersely, “we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . .” “Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. “Fiscal policy!" The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied. “Fiscal policy. . .” he repeated, “that is what I said.” “How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn’t grow on trees you know.” “If you would allow me to continue… .” Ford nodded dejectedly. “Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.” Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed. “But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut." Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down. “So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you’ll all agree that’s a sensible move under the circumstances." The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
It’s the same outcome either way if that research/tech is owned privately. Energy is probably worth more than gold TBH. Gold is almost useless, energy on the other hand is needed for everything.
arxiv.org: a pre-print source, this is not peer-reviewed yet. So, until other papers refer to this paper, it has low significance in the literature. The paper has references to other papers and to previous corpus of knowledge on the subject, which is good. However, this paper is based on simulations only.
Crucially, the scheme identified here does not negatively impact electricity production, and is also compatible with the challenging tritium breeding requirements of fusion power plant design because (n, 2n) reactions of 198Hg drive both transmutation and neutron multiplication
Monte Carlo transport calculations show that neutrons produced in a tokamak power plant can convert the abundant isotope 198Hg to stable 197Au via the (n,2n) channel, yielding several tonnes of gold per plant-year without compromising the tritium breeding ratio.
The decommissioned blanket material would increase in value, and the Mercury-198 in the blanket doesn’t majorly impact its effectiveness in transmuting lithium to tritium.
The “worst” gold isotope half-life is less than a year, so only a modest cool-down is needed for the output:
197Au to be Class 7 when activity concentration is > 2700 pCi/g, which is reached after 13.7 years for the initial concentration listed.
An even more stringent constraint can be applied for any gold that will be regularly handled by the general population. As a highly conservative requirement, we can stipulate that this gold must be less radioactive than a banana. Due to 40K content, bananas have an activity of ∼ 3520 pCi/kg, or about 420 pCi for a single banana. To meet this requirement, a troy ounce of gold with the initial isotope mix shown in Table 2 must sit for about 17.7 years to be below a banana equivalent level of activity.
What strikes me here with this paper is the suggested liquid blanket, so this would be a kin of D-T Fusion MSR. We now have two proposed technologies behind being able handle hot radioactive liquids.
must sit for about 17.7 years to be below a banana equivalent level of activity.
Banana for scale!
I understood some of those words. Nevertheless, thanks for providing some crucial context.
It also helps that we’re talking about rather dense nuclei too. So it’s not just a neutron absorbing blanket, but a rather high-performing one at that. Which you need to convert fusion outputs to heat and power anyway. And gold is soluble in mercury anyway, so extraction is already a known (albeit incredibly dangerous) process. Win-win.
yielding several tonnes of gold per plant-year
Mother of god that’s a lot to magic-up outta nowhere. At first I thought this would disrupt the market, but it looks like yearly global gold production is around 3000 tons a year. So it would take a lot of reactors to impact the gold market, so… yeah. Reactors really could start paying for themselves.
Reactors really could start paying for themselves.
Yeah, that should help them with their capital, storage costs and Hg procurement costs.
Now back to the energy generation…
The safe level isn’t that important, because the gold can be put into an ETF investment vehicle, which is a substantial enough demand for gold. National reserves (the vast majority of gold demand) too are long term holders.
2t/GWhth is a huge amount. While the best case economics for fusion is 30c/kwh cost = $3m/Gwhe, that would be 3GWhth = 6T of gold. Even at $45/oz (1/100th of current value) that would be $8m/Gwhe revenue, and would likely be able to sell electricity at market rates as the “waste product”, or not even bother with the expense/complexity of electricity generation.
Coward didn’t even call it alchemy in the abstract
My first thought was “what happens to all that gold under neutron irradiation?” Apparently it transmutes back to Mercury 198 with beta decay, which is the wrong isotope. But if Mercury 198 gets hit again… I think it turns into 199, which is also stable?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold-198
A lot of papers for these reactions are behind stupid subscription paywalls :(
Still though, it does seem extremely fortuitous, and it’s possible the gold doesn’t become impossibly radioactive. Maybe there’s some other chain that will cause problems, but the immediate concern in the bulk materials seems… alright.
You might want to check out our lord and saviour Sci-hub
uhm… if gold198 turns back into mercury in 64 hours, and is radioactive in the meantime… that sucks. But what they are doing is turning Mercury198 into mercury197, and that decays into (real) gold197 … afaiu.
As soon as they figure out how to turn lead into porn, we’ll be driving personal fusion powered space cars to mars.
Sell lead to a scrapyard, buy porn with the proceeds.
I’m choosing to believe their autocorrect turned gold into porn and I can’t stop chuckling
And just like that gold is a proof of work currency. Too bad those economics will change as gold becomes less scarce. Buy mercury now!
I wouldnt believe shit until they’ve answered the stability behind these reactions. Like the Lead article where they transformed lead into another element maybe Gold…? Ok but now you would have an unstable isotope of gold that would decay.
Edit: I read the article and it’s stable in theory.
If we could go back in time to tell the alchemy conspiracists about disappearing gold that would be wild.
Deuterium-tritium sounds a lot like stuff from star trek
it is:
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Antideuterium
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deuterium
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deuterium_cartridge
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deuterium_control_conduit
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deuterium_injection_subsystem
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deuterium_filter
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deuterium_poisoning
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deuterium_stream_coil
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deuterium_tank
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tritium
- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tritium_intermix
Another thing fusion reactors would be good for is “burning” high radioactivity fission waste.
…Keeping such waste in a hole isn’t that expensive, so maybe the economic viability is questionable, but still. Fusion is great sources of very high temperature neutrons for anything that needs it.
That being said, I’m skeptical of all the other stuff needed to make it practical. Like, say, the extreme neutron flux making all that incredible expensive containment equipment radioactive.
https://www.marathonfusion.com/alchemy.pdf
https://thebsdetector.substack.com/p/government-funded-alchemy
tldr from that blog's assessment:
First, the researchers have a high degree of credential credibility. […] These are very much not software engineers who think they’ve solved alchemy after talking with ChatGPT for a year or something.
[…]
Optimistically, in my mind this leaves about 10% odds that fusion energy becomes commercialized or at least piloted over the next couple decades and Marathon Fusion’s approach for the alchemical production of gold becomes a meaningful consideration for these fusion plants! That’s pretty high, and implies a high value for continuing to research this technology, even if not necessarily for Marathon Fusion specifically. Manifold [a prediction market] traders are giving this proposition (“Artificially produced gold on a significant scale by 2035?”) ~20% odds, which likely reflects the discount rate on a market that only resolves in 10 years, although it also leaves room for other potential methodologies for gold production (presumably also through fusion energy but who knows).
[…]
Oh ya, this Gold is Radioactive
Shit like this is what makes me question if this is our first run around or if we are looping a creation/destruction loop.
Ancient astronauts.
Younger dryas.
Unified flood myths.
Objects out of place in the larger historical context.
No historical records past cave paintings.
I’m just a bit of a nutter on this. Maybe alchemy was us trying to re-enact what our more advanced ancestors could do before something reset us. Maybe we were so advanced everything was digital and that’s why there’s no records. Books break down. Digital media breaks down. Know what doesn’t? Stone. But you can only do so much to tell people thousands of years from now. So you do what you can do. Oral storytelling, but then languages get lost and evolve but things persist.
It’s a great concept for fantasy or sci Fi.
Anyways I digress.
Let’s see if they can ask all get along this time… Nope 😔. Hits restart button
It’s a neat idea for sure, but the out of place artifacts are rarely/never as mysterious as people like Graham Hancock would suggest.
Younger Dryas wasn’t as catastrophic either. Nor are flood myths as unified.
It’s fun to imagine possibilities like that but I can’t conceive of how a society could advance to a nonphysical/digital technology paradigm without impacting the earth in enormously detectable ways.
I think it’s interesting to imagine a scenario like what if European explorers shipwrecked on a place like Rapa Nui, the most isolated inhabitable place on the planet. How many generations could they maintain knowledge of the globe, and their culture.
Obviously the Polynesians basically maintained their language (ie it was identifiable as a polynesian dialect) for ~500+ years in plausibly total isolation.
