A 1 GW fusion reactor could breed ~2 tonnes of gold a year from mercury, half its revenue
anselm · x · 2026-10-05
Andercot lays out the economics of a "gold-breeding" fusion reactor: every gigawatt-thermal of deuterium-tritium capacity can produce roughly 2 tonnes of gold per year by recycling 14 MeV neutrons through mercury. At current prices, about half the revenue would come from gold and half from electricity.
He frames this as technology moving beyond chemistry into industrial-scale "alchemy" — transmuting elements at energy densities a million times beyond ordinary material science. Early targets would be medical isotopes and enriched nuclear fuel, but if energy becomes too cheap to meter, transmutation could become a raw-material feedstock for the whole economy.
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