Gold has been a very sought-after asset due to many factors, one of them being the fact that it's a scarce asset and hence a good option to protect one's portfolio against inflation. However, some recent developments could challenge that notion.
Fusion technology and gold production
Marathon Fusion, a company that designs and engineers fuel-processing technologies for fusion power plants, has recently announced a possible solution to the mythical challenge of turning other elements into gold.
Without getting too deep in the technical details, their approach involves using high-energy neutrons present in deuterium-tritium fusion operations. These neutrons would be used to drive a multiplication reaction on mercury-198 to produce mercury-197, which then decays to the only stable isotope of gold.
Marathon also claims that using the high-energy neutrons for this purpose does not negatively impact fuel self-suficiency or power output. This is basically having gold being created as a side-product of energy generation.
With this approach, Marathon estimates that power plants can generate five thousand kilograms of gold per year, per gigawatt of electricity generation (~2.5 GWth), potentially doubling the value of these facilities.
This could be the beginning of a whole new era for nuclear fusion. Not only would we be able to generate abundant, clean energy, but also do it in an economically viable way, which is one of the main roadblocks for nuclear fusion nowadays.
Moreover, this is not limited to gold. Many other critical minerals could potentially be created the same way. Precious metals such as palladium, medical isotopes and also materials for nuclear batteries. All of these could be produced at scale to boost development in many areas of science.
Is gold no longer a scarce asset?
So what does this mean to gold? Now that we can supposedly produce it at will, is it no longer a scarce asset? Is it not a viable investment option anymore?
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's still too soon to make any assumptions of that kind. This research is very recent, and it has not even been peer-reviewed yet, so, as promising as it seems to be, there is no way to tell yet whether it will materialize into anything real.
Moreover, we are not sure yet if this "artificial gold" will retain all the properties of "the real thing" and thus have the same market value. It's quite possible that this "lab-grown" gold stays limited to industrial and scientific applications, and away from the hands of regular investors and the general public. We don't have any of the answers, and it's likely to be a few years before we get any more clarity on that front. So, for the time being, there should be no major changes in gold's status as a store of value.
Final thoughts
Nuclear fusion may be the key to unlocking the next technological revolution on our planet; any developments in that area are welcome.
Marathon's process of generating gold almost as a byproduct of energy generation could represent a pivotal point for nuclear energy adoption, as it can potentially make it economically viable while also serving many other industries with precious and rare minerals.
This could, in the future, disrupt the way we think and value these materials, but we are still too early in the game to draw any conclusions.