Essay by Eric Worrall
Gee, who could have predicted a nuclear fusion startup which promised commercial fusion before 2030 might not meet the deadline?
Sep 28, 2026 – Business
Seattle-area Helion quietly moves goalpost on fusion
…
The latest: Helion this year removed a prediction from its website that Orion, its first commercial power plant, will begin producing electricity by 2028.
- A Helion webpage now says the plant will “begin initial operations in 2028.” It does not define initial operations.
- “We will not, in no universe, have 50 megawatts hit full operation in 2028,” Helion public affairs director Jackie Siebens said this summer at the FusionX conference in Boston.
- Full power won’t come before 2029 or 2030, she acknowledged. Helion declined to comment.
What we’re watching: Helion’s contract with Microsoft requires Orion to at least “be connected to the grid and begin operations by the end of 2028,” Siebens said.
- It’s unclear whether connecting to the grid in 2028 also means supplying electricity. Microsoft declined to comment.
Two academic papers published this year questioned fundamental assumptions behind Helion’s approach, including whether its reactor could produce enough fusion energy to overcome energy losses.
…
Read more: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2026/09/28/helion-energy-orion-fusion-microsoft-commercial-power-altman
Sabine Hossenfelder’s take;
Who predicted Helion would be a flop? We did actually – in my opinion their idea was absurd from the outset.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. The following March 2026 paper discusses how Helion’s ignition sequence leaks energy like water through a sieve. If I’ve understood correctly very little of the injected energy is available for igniting the plasma, a likely fatal problem for a fusion reactor which is supposed to produce energy, unless you perhaps have a very large machine, which is something Helion was trying to move away from. In addition, according to the paper, their energy collection system at best can collect energy on a similar magnitude to what was injected – which leaves very little margin for error.
The Challenge for Adiabatically Heated FRC Based D-He Fusion
- Research
- Open access
- Published: 25 March 2026
- Volume 45, article number 24 (2026)
- Cite this article
You have full access to this open access article
Abstract
The performance requirements of fusion reactors based on FRC adiabatic compression with a D-He fuel are discussed. Assuming thermonuclear reaction rates, confinement times exceeding 10 ms are required for peak magnetic fields below 25 T. The typical thermodynamic cycle of such reactors in current/flux variables is computed. The fact that most magnetic energy is channeled to vacuum magnetic energy, instead of heating the plasma, translates into a very elongated thermodynamical cycle. The consequences for the viability of this type of reactors are discussed.
Read more: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10894-026-00565-z
My biggest concern with Helion’s approach, Helion’s big idea – using Helium 3 for fusion rather than Tritium and Deuterium – is like trying to solve the next nuclear fusion problem before you have solved the current problem. Helium 3 fusion is at least a thousand times harder than Tritium fusion because you have to work with a much hotter plasma, and the energy yield is a lot lower, but Helion jumped straight into the hard path, and rejected the possibility of using Tritium as a stepping stone proving ground for their hard path technology.
And they’ve taken an estimated $1.5 billion of investor capital with them on their wildly speculative leap into the darkness (The $15 billion Sabine mentions appears to be the current valuation of the company).
One interesting feature of Helion is how much attention and investment they attracted from Silicon valley tech giants, you know, the same clowns who tried to convince us to switch to unworkable renewable energy solutions. Anyone starting to see a pattern here?
Lets just say I’m not personally rushing to invest.
“initial operations…”
To my mind, even the act of thinking of phoning a construction company and arranging a first spade in the ground qualifies.
Initial Operations means any Joint Venture activity commenced in connection with the acquisition of the Venture’s interest in the Prospect including legal and accounting services, geological services, organizational activities and administrative activities – Law Insider
Initial operations in Scotland
Net Zero is Destroying Rural Scotland The principal cause is the lucrative carbon credit market, making it more profitable for landowners to embark on large peatland regeneration schemes at the expense of traditional Scottish sports. It’s particularly profitable because this ‘rewilding’ is paid for by the Scottish taxpayer, with Holyrood having committed £250 million to restoring 250,000 hectares of peatland by 2030. The landowners happily fill in the drainage ditches that, 60 years ago, they were paid to dig in the hope of improving the grazing. They sell the carbon credits each year to businesses that want to offset their emissions, and watch their land rise in value thanks to the carbon gold rush.
Net Zero is destroying our country from Penzance to Fort William and initial operations have closed three refineries in two years with plenty more jobs to go.
Nuclear Fusion – so powerful and effective; it moves goalposts faster than AGW .
But, Nomen Est Omen, one can not really expect that a company named Helion goes for Tritium instead of Helium ;
though I’m pretty sure that renaming the company The Ranos would be more fitting.
The good thing is that they won’t run out of fuel,as they can use the Helium 3 created in Deuterium reactors.
Cheap, clean and abundant fusion power is only a decade away…and has been for at least the past 50 years. Probably still will be in another 50 years.
I’m eagerly awaiting my Mr. Fusion powered DeLorean.
The taxpayer is still waiting for John DeLorean to pay back those loans!
Yep the Irish govt loans were never paid back. As an aside…
I met MB Scott in Santa Barbara more than 20 years ago who had partnered with DeLorean many years ago. He wouldn’t tell me what was involved. MB was very wealthy and I asked him how he got his start. He told me that he met an evangelist named Garner Ted Armstrong from Pasadena Calif. Late 40s or early 50s. He told me that Garner was spending #300/ mo. advertising on the radio. MB said he boosted that to $3000/mo and the money started rolling in. Then even more for ads and they became rich.
. . . not to mention Solyndra.
… prompts one to think, propose, for just a nano- or picosecond or two that possibly the reactions in the sun may not be fusion after all …
.
Okay, back to normal program/channel/ broadcasting content …
ARE YOU FK ing kidding me?? Effing downvotes for simply EXPRESSING a passing thought?
HOW DAMNED NARROW_MINDED. You know who are, BROADEN your horizons a bit. GET OUT OF YOUR RUT. DO YOU have a better idea for why FUSION cannot be REPLICATED here on earth? We can duplicate damn near everything else, SO GRANT A LITTLE FREEDOM OF THOUGHT to ‘thinking outside YOUR small box’.
Meanwhile, ‘narrow minds’, put this in your pipe and smoke it (while blowing a mental gasket, NO DOUBT):
“Technology Validation of Mills Classical Theory” https://brilliantlightpower.com/theory_validation/
The best confirmation of any theory is the prediction and realization of technology. Beyond exactly solving observables over 85 orders of magnitude of scale from that of sub-atomic particles to that of large-scale cosmology including predicting the acceleration of the expansion of the cosmos and the current Webb Space Telescope observations, Mills’ classical theory predicts transformational technological breakthroughs in communications and mobility. Data confirms Mills theoretical predictions.
Jim H-H fusion has been created using fusors, so it definitely works. Fusors use electrostatic fields to confine plasma, and are a completely viable path to testing any fusion reaction you want. They even have commercial application – fusors are used in some commercial neutron generators. The one thing they can’t do sadly is produce more energy than is injected to maintain the electrostatic confinement field.
Or, it may not be fusion the way mankind currently defines it.
Or, it may be fusion and something else, that we have not figured out.
I agree. We need to identify and analyze all of the possible alternatives.
It could be a combination of fusion and cold = cold fusion!
In my early years, it was presented as a combination of nuclear fusion AND fission. In hindsight, that simple explanation seems an oversimplification.
We will probably never have a practical economically viable nuclear fusion reactor.
We already have one. It is sitting in the sky and has been provide free energy for the last 4 billion years or so. And it will continue to do so for the next few billion years.
“I’m eagerly awaiting my Mr. Fusion powered DeLorean.”
Were he alive today, John DeLorean might be CEO of General Fusion, a parent corporation with five different subsidiaries, each with its own technology and its own marketing scheme for selling gullible investors on its particular approach to developing commercial-scale fusion.
That means the new start-up date is in 2036!
I have seen no credible evidence of any kind that commercial nuclear fusion is possible at all. The claimed breakthroughs look like wishful thinking from pr departments of organisations looking for more funding.
I suspect it will happen eventually and when it does, it’ll be revolutionary- but we won’t be around.
‘I suspect it will happen eventually…’
Perhaps, but considering how the culture of the ‘West’ increasingly resembles that of Imperial Rome’s on its way to decline, there will be a substantial delay.
To put it bluntly, I don’t see how a physics ‘community’ that can’t see its way to pointing out the junk science behind CAGW can ever figure out the technical issues of a workable fusion reactor.
As to the West resembling imperial Rome– that’s a complex issue. Positive in some respects and negative in others. I think physicists are different than climate “scientists”- more nose to the grindstone. You don’t get an advance degree in physics with the lame excuse for thinking of climate “scientists”. If it takes another 100 years- not a big deal for the long term. Just another century gone- and many more people forgotten- but history moves on.
‘As to the West resembling imperial Rome– that’s a complex issue. Positive in some respects and negative in others.’
I was thinking about undefended borders, bread and circuses, debased money, urban mobs, rule by decree, etc. I’m curious as to what you think the ‘positives’ are.
The positives of the empire? Engineering, law and military – until it got corrupted, and if it wasn’t for plagues, it might have lasted longer even with corruption. I’m not generally in favor of empires, though. You get one by slaughtering people and stealing everything in site and slavery back in ancient times. But without that empire there would still be conflict so maybe it’s a tradeoff.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
pizza and spaghetti 🙂
Wealth accumulation instead of building.
serious comment.
It is possible that some extra terrestrial civilization will grant us access to that and other technologies.
Wait.
No evidence we are not alone.
No evidence there is other life out there.
The future reveals her secrets in her own time.
Is it possible to prove that something does not exist?
No. One cannot “prove a negative.”
Actually, there is lots of evidence that we are not alone. There are countless YouTube channels discussing this topic every day. The US government has been releasing information every few weeks for months. It’s a slow drip- but there is indeed evidence accumulating.
You probably guess that my “no evidence” statements was intended to keep this from becoming a UFO blog.
The perfect SCAM to get public FUNDING! A huge dream, FUSION power, always decades in the future, do not stop the funding or we will lose all we have put in so far, the gambler’s fallacy writ large.
Sounds a lot like “renewable” “clean” “green” energy, eh?
I agree. Fission works and the reactors particularly small module reactors are available.
Good way to raise billions- make a huge promise for a fantastic new product. Lots of rich people out there looking for investments- and foolishly sometimes.
The approach isn’t limited to investing. Consider the current rise in the popularity of socialism:
‘This plays to two of Marx’s great historical swindles. First, commerce and all human action can be scientifically engineered by a central authority to produce desired ends. Second, that the nobility of those ends in the indeterminate future justifies any and all means, potentially limitless suffering, in the present.’
https://mises.org/mises-wire/socialists-it-doesnt-matter-if-socialism-works-what-matters-power
And another one does….
“Helios works boldly holding down the heat
With the hum held way down low
Ain’t no sound but the sound of investors feet
Electron guns ready to go
Are you ready? Hey, are you ready for this?
Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?
Out of the doorway, the atoms rip
To the sound of the eletron beat, yeah
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust, yeah”
Apologies to Queen
Lost a lot of respect for Microsoft, who ‘backed’ this scam. Seattle connections.
As a French physics Nobel Laureate once said,
”Fusion. The idea is pretty—just put the Sun in a box. The only problem is, we don’t know how to make the box.”
And likely never will.
I think everyone is eager to know how the energy of a Tzar Bomb that vaporizes everything within 20 miles can fit into anything smaller than an Aircraft carrier.
And controlling such an energetic output and make it constant instead of shortterm peaks would require the greatest genius level mankind has ever had.
I’d like to think that that a ‘flow through’ type of system could make some useful power.
What do I mean…. Picture a gas turbine, air comes in the front, it is compressed, fuel is added and the hot gases exhaust out the back. The ‘waste’ heat is often used to make steam, (refer combined cycle gas turbine as an example).
And here’s the problem. The gas turbine gets hot, the compressor fans on the discharge side get very hot and must be close to their thermal limits at even a chemical energy level. So fans in the exhaust stream are not going to work, especially at fusion temperatures.
So what about a SCRAM jet type of approach, use the inflow of gas/fuel to compress the gas and then, fingers crossed, (unicorns fly), some fusion occurs. And there are no fans in the exhaust.
IF only a design could be generated that used low temperature compressors to create a huge flow of fusion fuel into a very narrow channel, to create a zone dense enough to simulate the gravity induced forces at the centre of a sun. AND whilst we are still dreaming, how about designing the system so that some of the fuel flowing into the ignition chamber formed a laminar protection layer, (surrounding the central core), to stop the heat of fusion from destroying the container.
I suppose on paper somebody could do the sums on this and find a workable solution but in reality, I just can’t see it working, too many items can cause turbulence leading to a failure and there is no ready supply of unicorns.
AND IF it could be made to work, how do you separate the bulk of the fuel pumped into the chamber from the very low percentage of reaction products produced, ultimately the fuel would be contaminated with isotopes and elements that are too heavy to react at the pressures developed, (heavier elements typically require more energy to fuse). And I have left out the part of neutron radiation contaminating everything.
AND of course…. How much energy are you going to get out of this compared to the MASSIVE energy required to make it compress the fuel in the first place.
That last part is ALWAYS the problem, whatever containment system you use, the energy required to produce it will exceed the energy developed. Those superconducting magnets and their cooling systems are massive energy hogs, they always will be.
If it had to be the size of Mt Everest, but otherwise it worked great, would that be good enough?
At the risk of repeating myself – again:
Empirical evidence of nuclear fusion is limited to two situations. First, fusion occurs in the cores of innumerable stars where the mass is sufficient to contain the process by gravity. This can never be replicated on Earth.
Second, fusion has occurred in manmade thermonuclear reactions, which are inherently uncontrolled and unsustained. And therefore totally unsuited to power generation which must be both controlled and sustained to be functionally useful to mankind.
Let’s concentrate our available nuclear science and engineering capabilities on fission, especially breeder reactors using Thorium fuel.
At the risk of repeating what is known to many people familiar with attempting to create controlled nuclear fusion on Earth (outside of thermonuclear bombs, that is 🙂 ), one can today buy commercially manufactured Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) devices that are commonly used to conveniently and continuously produce high energy neutrons via fusion.
“IEC devices were the very first fusion products to reach the commercial market in 2000, as neutron generators.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_confinement
Please note that I’m NOT saying anything about IEC device net power output versus power input.
But Thorium is not fissile. It can be converted to fissile U233 inside a suitably designed fission reactor and has. The Navy’s Light Water Breeder Reactor was fueled with U233 and blanketed with Thorium in a manner to promote Thorium conversion. The reactor operated in the Shippingport Atomic Power Plant in the 1970s for a few years and upon inspection, the machine generated around 1% more U233 than it burned. This is all publicly available information.
Thanks Denis. I agree that all this is known about Th233-U233 conversion by neutron capture. But Thorium is the starting point”fuel” and it is far more abundant than Uranium and can be easily mined, purified and handled with no practical radiation issues. USA has abundant Th resources in heavy-mineral components of beach sand, as well as other sources. Compared to Uranium, Thorium is literally (maybe also littoral-ly) “dirt cheap”
Fusion will become applicable the day we learn how to control gravity. Along with anti-gravity, we will see a renaissance in the human condition.
Just how does one convert a fusion plasma at temperatures of at least 200,000,000 C into electricity has never been explained at least not to my knowledge. What materials or configuration of materials can withstand such an intense source of heat and in some designs an incredibly dense and energetic neutron flux for more than a few seconds or perhaps minutes? What is the conversion technology is being imagined? Is it photon conversion, a steam engine as fission, fossil fuel or sunlight+mirror machines use, or something else?
The end result of this 50+ year quest for “Fusion Power” is simply to boil water to power a steam turbine generator. Same as fission power has been doing reliably for over 75 years.
I would call it a “Sisyphean task”, except that someone already got the boulder to the top of the hill, decades ago.
The most current answer to your question is that the physical process of electromagnetic induction (aka Faraday’s Law of Induction) will use the high velocity movement of electrons and/or positive ions in the plasma to generate electricity in copper coils suitably positioned around the plasma section of the reactor. The electromagnetic coupling theoretically permits low-melting-temperature copper wire and containment vessel wall materials and supporting structures to be physically distant from the volume of super-hot active plasma (referred to separately as theoretically using “magnetic confinement” of the plasma).
The rub is in practically achieving what is proposed as being theoretically possible.
Some older concepts proposed for nuclear fusion power plants (especially those focused on using D-T fuels) planned to use the thermal energy from fusion-generated high energy neutrons escaping the magnetically-confined plasma and slamming into the reactor’s surrounding wall or engineered “blanket” in order to boil water, create steam, and drive a traditional turbine connected to an electrical generator. However, there are GREAT problems in developing materials than can survive long periods of neutron bombardment without becoming brittle and without becoming dangerously radioactive, hence a movement toward direct electromagnetic induction.
In the Sabine H video, this voice-to-text caption appeared “…the Max Plunk Institute…”
OK, must be a new outfit.
By the way, I can produce energy from fusion this winter in my woodstove. Sun (fusion) >> photosynthesis in the woods >> trees give us firewood >> we burn the firewood for heat.
There.
Max Plunk Institute is all about Guantam theory.( waterboarding and other aquatic sports in cuba )
That’s a solar battery you are burning in that stove. Is that a crime yet?
From the above article:
Would it be OK to soak up, say, 1 MW from the grid and transform some of that, say 100 W, back into grid input voltage and power so as to meet that contractual commitment?
Hey, no charge for this, Helion.
We need another Fleischmann & Pons to get the misledia pumped up about cold fusion again. It would be entertaining to see what a group of “experts” would do with that bit of chicanery after what they’ve been able to do with ‘global warming,’ ‘climate change,’ ‘carbon sequestration,’ et al.
Misnamed ‘cold fusion’ actually exists. As global head of strategy, I sent Mot’s top physics guy to France for two weeks to check it out. Problem was, they could not reliably reproduce it. The phenomenon is actually LENR (think reverse beta decay), where a ‘heavy’ electron (heavy via excitation) is captured by a proton to create a neutron plus released energy.
In the PF setup, it occurred only at the tips of random metallic stress fracture cracks hence was inherently unreliable.
Using high frequency AC, it was later reliably shown by Brillouin Energy at 2x net energy gain. The attempt to scale to 4X net energy gain failed. So a commercial deadend.
Actually, my intent was to posit another media-circus-attacting scenario to provide another focus to a misledia completely unconcerned by reality. With their agonizingly slow recognition of the loss of basis for continuing to foster alarm over whatever ‘climate crisis’ announcement is released today, my hope was distraction, not content. Apologies for being overly opaque!
Luddites, the lot of you. Ned would be proud.
If Rudolph can power a red nose in the cold of the high atmosphere the smart folks in Seattle can conjure a miracle. They have provided the State with a gasoline price 44% higher than the backward state of Alabama. And, they have created a major urban region on one of the most dangerous seismic platforms in the world. How can you not be a fan?
I’m optimistic about Helion going commercial, but in 2082 not 2028.
Helion’s Claimed Long‑Term Solution: Generate Its Own He‑3
Helion relies on a natural by‑product of D–D fusion:
D + D → T (tritium)
D + D → He‑3
The tritium then rapidly fuses with deuterium:
T + D → He‑4 + neutron
which also produces additional plasma heating and more He‑3 indirectly.
But here’s the key:
The amount of He‑3 produced this way is small.
Helion has said publicly that:
Even D-D fusion is at least 20x harder than D-T fusion.
I’m not saying Helion should focus on unsustainable D-T fusion as an end goal, what I’m saying is they should prove their idea works with D-T before sucking in more investor cash. If they can’t make it work with D-T, there is no way it will work with anything else.
My understanding is because it is a pulsed system and is expected to have relatively low yields the reason they are pursuing D-He3 is they get a proton which they can convert directly to energy, so no need for a steam cycle. This meaning they could produce net power at lower yields, or stated a different way, their approach would never be viable with D-T fusion which is why they aren’t pursuing it.
Helion uses D-D fusion because their strategy is to directly recover the energy as electricity rather than use heat to drive turbines. Its a good strategy IMO.
You have to make the fusion happen before you can capture the energy. They should get off their high horse and capture the energy which is available to capture, not go for the impossible but aesthetically pleasing solution.
You call it “aesthetically pleasing” but in my mind direct recovery of energy with minimal neutron damage is a whole different process that is strategically leaps and bounds ahead of the others. Nothing about fusion is easy.
It is and always has been a scam. I am sure the Helion CEO and other senior executives pay themselves very generous salaries.
A couple of moments after reading the em notice , I loled thinking : for a Fusion company what else could it be ?
“Fusion reactors for power generation are just around the corner!” – popular saying since the 1980s
China is taking a shot at fusion but China has made bets in lots of energy projects including Thorium Liquid Salts Cooled Reactors. The Thorium Reactors could be factory produced and small as a transportation container. Thorium is a good way to go so more money will be bet on fusion power – need that super high temp to boil that water, eh? China appreciates all the free information about fusion and thorium reactors.
Even more reason to make fission the best it can be.
LET’S just put it in print for the (several and vociferous) dumbbells among us reading here: The Brilliant Light Power Hydrino-reaction based SunCell (TM) designed and built by Dr. Randell L. Mills __WILL__ come to fruition LONG before ANY actual power (energy) producing Fusion-based reactor __ever__ makes an appearance. The time for the publication of (the many) analytical and validation ‘white’ papers on the Hydrino-operative SunCell (TM) device is over.
Typically, scientists and educated laypeople are first aware of the conceptual possibility of a given novel technology well before it turns into a practical real-world product. It often takes decades to go from “possible in principle” to a working, commercially available product, and interested parties are monitoring the development path the whole time.
It has not been so with the SunCell. Due to the misguided controversy over Hydrino, from the point of view of the majority of the world, the SunCell will materialize out of nowhere, more or less fully fledged.
Here is an analogy that makes clear how startling this will be: imagine how utterly shocking it would have been to view the Wright brothers’ first airplane in flight if one had never even conceived of the possibility of a man-made flying machine.
Timeframe: This year into next. [As of (per BrLP)] “September 29. We are testing gas
composition sensing and compositional control, pressure control, programable logic controllers, various sensors, pressure sensor testing and selection, commercial components for all electronics, electronics rack packaging, all-system commercial packaging, monitor and control software development, graphical user interface (GUI) development, interchangeability of all parts with the capability of being mass manufactured, a novel injector positioning system and automated positioning controls capable of independent system assembly and disassembly/replacement, injector nozzles, electrical isolation liner simplification and mass manufacture enablement, injector height, separation, and design for injector optimization, control of plasma centering in the reaction chamber, pump rate controls, thermal management, coatings to prevent alloy formation under long duration operation, simplification and vacuum integrity optimization of gas lines and all connections, a gas recirculation system comprising several new systems including a novel gas recirculation pump, fast connect-disconnect unions for system components, optimization of the design of all heated parts to limit the startup energy and time using only one IGBT and optionally jumped ignition power, design of tubing such that one template is used for essentially all related parts, optimization of induction heating antenna array and novel switches, sub-antenna connectors to allow sub-coil assembly and disassembly during system part replacement, reversible high temperature insulation for startup and its housing, system frame redesign and build enabling component mounting flexibility and standardization, novel adjustable mounting brackets for all system components, methods for rapid repair and replacement of parts, PV dome seal modification to permit rapid disassembly, additional seal components to permit operation at elevated as well as sub-atmospheric conditions, supply chain and vendor supplied parts development, development of fabricator support relationships, engineering drawings to permit mass production, and business development of photovoltaic (PV) converter.”
As of RIGHT NOW, the situation with the Hydrino-reaction based SunCell (TM) and the rest of the (scientific) world puts us smack dab in the middle of this operational phrase: “All progress depends on the unreasonable man ignoring newly discovered science, instead remaining comfortable with that which he already knows .”
To quote George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
(From GBS “Man and Superman)”
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Sun cell are claiming a new energy level for hydrogen lower than ground state, which can only be achieved by an extreme electric arc.
If such an energy state was possible surely there would be loads of spectral evidence from extreme celestial bodies which produce far more energetic environments than sun cell’s electric spark.
Mills is a scam artist. SunCell is his third (or maybe fourth) reincarnation of his hydrino ‘idea’. I wrote about him at length in ebook “The Arts of Truth”.
When folks talk about (controlled) fusion energy production I sometimes think about the Alchemists of old who sought for ways to turn lead to gold. It turns out the folks at CERN examined that experimentally by transmuting lead into gold in the LHC, publishing the results in 2025. Long (but interesting) story short, they found a process for producing ultraperipheral highly relativistic collisions that had reasonable (in terms of time) yield of gold. Of course, what’s reasonable for the ALICE collaboration my not be reasonable for financiers, because the cost per gram turns out to be $75 quadrillion per gram of gold, factoring in only costs for electricity, and assuming some way can be figured out to collect the gold products, which generally go on to strike beam pipe structures in the target area. But the good news for investors, is that they estimate that if instead of using the existing beam, someone would fund them to develop an accelerator special purposed for lead to gold transmutation, they think that they might be able to reduce the cost per yield easily a few orders of magnitude and could set a real business goal in perhaps 10 or 20 years. All they need is funding. And if that doesn’t work, they think maybe AI could do it.