When a technology fails to sustain itself on its own energy merits, it has no choice but to turn to the fantasy of gold. In the year 2025, with the planet collapsing from heat, cities slowly sinking due to rising sea levels, and AI creating art faster than humans can admire it, a group of entrepreneurs has decided to revive humanity’s oldest dream: alchemy.
The company is called Marathon Fusion. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, of course. Its mission? To turn mercury into gold using nuclear fusion reactors. Yes, the same type of reactors that, for more than half a century, have promised to be “the future” but, like flying cars, never quite take off.
Now, faced with the lack of tangible energy results, some fusion promoters have come up with a new slogan: “If we can’t light up cities, at least let’s make gold”.
From the Cauldron to the Tokamak: Chronicle of an Obsession
The transmutation of elements is not an invention of modern physicists. 13th-century alchemists already dreamed of turning lead into gold. The difference is that they used mythology and philosopher’s stones. Today, a more sophisticated formula is used: nuclear physics, tokamak reactors, and millions of dollars in investment.
According to Marathon, the trick is to bombard mercury-198 with neutrons generated in the fusion process. This creates mercury-197, which decays in about 64 hours into gold-197, the only stable isotope of gold. In theory, they could produce up to 5 tons of gold per year. At current prices, that’s equivalent to about $600 million. Almost the same revenue the reactor would generate by producing electricity.
The catch? There’s no electricity. No working reactor. No gold. Just PowerPoints.
The real gem of this story isn’t the gold, but the narrative. Marathon Fusion, which has so far raised less than $10 million in private capital and grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, is selling an idea older than Newton, packaged with fusion graphs and promises of literal enrichment.
The gold obtained, if achieved, would require 14 to 18 years of radioactive decay before it could be sold. So no, they can’t take it to the Bank of England tomorrow or melt it down into ingots with the Queen on them.
Furthermore, and this is the most brilliant part of the plan: in a world where the value of gold is based on its scarcity, what would happen if it suddenly became abundant and rolled out of reactors like bread from a baking oven? It’s the typical reverse logic of advanced capitalism: a solution that ruins the market it aims to save.
Alchemy as a Business Model
Some physicists, such as Princeton’s Ahmed Diallo and Dan Brunner of Commonwealth Fusion, admit that the concept is “intriguing” and even “potentially viable,” provided fusion technology comes to fruition, as reported by the Financial Times.
But here’s the crux of the problem: there are no operational fusion reactors producing net energy today. So the idea of generating gold in an environment that can’t even sustain itself is, at best, premature; at worst, a fantasy of bored investors.
The most alarming thing is that this narrative is catching on. Because in a world where cryptocurrencies are born out of thin air and the shares of companies with no “physical” product are worth millions, promising radioactive gold doesn’t seem so absurd. In fact, it seems like an excellent branding strategy.
Nuclear fusion—which should have been the planet’s energy salvation—is being pushed by a medieval narrative. What was once the dream of energy self-sufficiency now needs the promise of bullion to keep breathing. There’s no energy. There’s no gold. But there’s an investor pitch.
Alchemy, after all, hasn’t died. It’s just transformed. And like everything in this century, it now has its own website, a modern logo, and a funding round underway.
English 
Spanish 