[modeless]

Unfortunately gold generated in this way would be radioactive. They calculate they would have to store the gold for over 13 years to not require labeling as radioactive waste, or over 17 years to reach the level of radioactivity of a banana.

I bet it would still be less valuable than regular gold even after that. It could still be identified, and people would discriminate against it. People are funny about nuclear waste, and likely wouldn't accept arguments like "it's perfectly safe" and "it's less radioactive than a banana".

[ChuckMcM]

This is not a problem for finance bros, they would sell a discounted note that gave you "ownership" of the gold in 17 years at some discount on the current spot price of gold. So you'd get these things that 'mature' in 17 years and you know their going to be worth whatever the spot price of gold is then, so it becomes a simple problem of pricing the risk that gold will be worth something in 17 years (people by gold futures all the time which this basically is).

[bb88]

The treasury sells bonds that mature after X years. So I suspect something similar could happen. But further there could be refinement if the radioactive isotopes could interact chemically in ways that gold couldn't.

Then they could sell pure gold, and then hold the crap gold for 20 years and sell that later.

BTW, I was at Teardown.

[stogot]

I’d hold crap gold for retirement at a discount today

[woleium]

This is also a well solved problem that hard cheese has. Some folks have their retirement savings invested in slowly maturing cheeses.

[floxy]

>In practice, given that much of all gold is used to store value and is not actively in use, we do not expect the need to store it for 7–17 years to be a major impediment; at worst, it means that the product will initially have somewhat less value than pure 197Au, and so some discount should be applied to the value of freshly produced gold.

[lantry]

but when we are generating literal tons of gold for free, won't gold no longer be a good store of value because it will no longer be scarce?

[actinium226]

A 1GW reactor (nuclear fission reactors are usually 1GW, and you'll have a couple or several at a single plant) would produce something like 5-10 metric tons of gold in a year. According to USGS[1] there has been 187,000 metric tons of gold produced and another 57,000 metric tons known about but not yet mined.

There are currently hundreds of nuclear fission reactors in the world so if you assume a similar number of fusion reactors, you'll get thousands of metric tons per year of gold production. World gold production was ~3,600 metric tons in 2022 [2].

So ultimately, yes, it would impact the price, but it will be many decades before we have hundreds of fusion power plants producing all that gold, and so it's not going to saturate the market for a long time. It may never saturate the market if demand for gold continues to go up in the coming decades.

1. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-much-gold-has-been-found-world 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining#Statistics

[mensetmanusman]

It’s not free, also we generate new gold with mining.

[modeless]

You guys have a lot more faith than I do in people's ability to have rational beliefs about nuclear waste.

[therealpygon]

Most people would never know, if it wouldn’t be for every gold-related company having a vested interest in making people scared of it.

Plus, 20 years is really not very long for it to be completely harmless; just ask the world’s supplies of whiskeys that really only start to have any value after 10+ years.

[robocat]

Industrial gold demand for use in electronics is about 250 tonnes per year. Much of that likely doesn't care about slight radioactivity?

Maybe you wouldn't use that gold for bond wires (but they are less used now and mostly copper AFAIK).

[Smoosh]

I agree with you, but people can also be very irrational about the value of gold.

[Waterluvian]

That seems like so little time it’s just a slight detail to iron out.

I also doubt it would be worth much less. I suspect most gold physically sits idle for longer periods of time while changing ownership often.

[Aeolun]

17 years to banana is basically free money.

[K0balt]

Theres always money in the banana stand!

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Most gold does not even leave the vaults. Just paper trades on who owns it.

[bravesoul2]

Bitcoin solves this by being goldless

[more_corn]

There’s always money in the infinite gold to banana scam.

[mxmlnkn]

The "gold" would not be radioactive as far as I understand. The reaction is 198Hg (stable) -> 197Hg (65h half life) -> 197Au (stable). You would end up with a mix of radioactive 197Hg and stable 197Au. It should be easy to separate these with established processes because you can easily refine 99.99% gold via various chemical and electrolytic processes. But I doubt any established refinery would touch radioactive inputs because it would contaminate the whole processing chain.

[dogma1138]

The biggest problem is that it would prevent this type of gold from being useful in electronics and medical applications.

But I think it may actually end up in jewelry especially as it can be mixed with “natural” gold to reduce its signature even further.

[OutOfHere]

That thought fails altogether since it will do perfectly well sitting in a vault as a reserve for a 1:1 gold backed crypto coin. Of course this holds true only until its value collapses due to its lack of scarcity.

[mtzaldo]

It reminded me of avocado trees. They take a couple of years to produce avocados and still people plant those.

[dr_dshiv]

And, avocados are actually as radioactive as bananas (high potassium)

[shutupnerd0000]

Imagine a whiskey manufacturer saying "this is impossible because we'll have to age it for 13 years" lel

[modeless]

Imagine a whiskey manufacturer saying "our whiskey is radioactive but it's ok because it will be less radioactive by the time you drink it!"

[dr_dshiv]

“Our whiskey is carcinogenic but it’s ok because…”

Said every whiskey manufacturer ever.

[readthenotes1]

Skoal!

[Ekaros]

Well for gold that will be placed in some vault dig deep into the ground that doesn't seem too bad trade off..

[jlogelin]

I mean, as a species we dig up gold for the sole purpose of putting it into well protected vaults as a store of value. It's not a far cry to say we'll simply store the radioactive gold in lead vaults instead. But yeah, if we can print rare earth metals now, I won't be betting on them to store economic value.