Marathon Fusion claims mercury-to-gold transmutation without disclosing key data

San Francisco startup Marathon Fusion said on October 21 it transmuted mercury into stable gold using fusion neutrons at 10 times CERN's 2025 benchmark. The company has not disclosed yield, purity or cost, and no independent verification is available.

• Claimed rate is 10x CERN's benchmark, but the comparison metric is unspecified
• Reactor runs at about 1 kW; projections of up to 2 tonnes of gold a year assume gigawatt plants
• Freshly produced gold carries radioactive isotopes requiring 7 to 18 years of storage
• Copper-64 and copper-67 isotopes for cancer treatment are the more credible near-term revenue