There's only 21 cubic meters in total of gold above ground?

[SpacePete]

Visualised:

 

[Ag bullet]

6-7 grams/ tonne is super high grade ore. many mines are processing stuff less than 1 gram per tonne.

 

[No1joey]

It's highly highly dependant on energy costs. If LM pull off their modular fusion reactor then you can look to see almost every form of commodity completely revolutionised price wise. Possibly the biggest shakeup to the human economy ever, but if it's true it will lead to such a massive shakeup that it's all but impossible to predict the ramifications. As was mentioned, sea water contains minute trace gold in suspension, if you had virtual unlimited power that was fueled by small amounts of dueterium (separated from sea water also), you could afford to extract gold from the water. Gold will likely do much better than other commodities though, oil and gas will all but disappear, except for plastics and lubricants there won't be much need.

If it wasn't LM you would laugh at someone saying they have a small fusion reactor design ready for an operational prototype in a year and commercial models in 10 but LM isn't a crack pot startup. If they make a claim like that it isn't automatically accurate but it's serious enough to give pause for thought. Worth thinking about but I wouldn't worry to much until they announce they actually have it sorted then sell your stack before people realise the connection and invest in technology stocks.

Still, as people have pointed out, fusion is always a few decades in the future no matter how many decades go by so I wouldn't stress about it to much now.

As for gold in the earths core, fusion aside, we will be regularly mining gold from asteroids long before we ever get a single drill head halfway to that depth and mining is MUCH more tricky than research drilling, hardly worth thinking about.

I read an article on that, yes they predict it will take at least 10 years for a working model and they estimate that one unit would be able to power approx. 80,000 homes. It would have a shelf life too though I wasn't able to find out how long one could last for.

So if LM were able to pull it off that's 10 years from now for a working model, I'd say at least another 10 years after that to be implemented into mining if they were able to do so which I doubt it, LM might be busy for decades after they get one working installing them in the US army's military, which I would say would pay better.

Even if they did sell units to mining companies to be used to power refineries I don't see it increasing output, just cutting power costs, but, the great thing about gold is it's future is not just pegged on power being expensive there are a lot of aspects of mining that won't change just because the power is cheaper not to mention a hundred other factors that influence the price of gold that are non mining related.

Plus there is also the cost of buying a fusion reactor and it's maintenance. The environmental benefits could end up taking the spotlight from the cost savings.

 

[phrenzy]

It's highly highly dependant on energy costs. If LM pull off their modular fusion reactor then you can look to see almost every form of commodity completely revolutionised price wise. Possibly the biggest shakeup to the human economy ever, but if it's true it will lead to such a massive shakeup that it's all but impossible to predict the ramifications. As was mentioned, sea water contains minute trace gold in suspension, if you had virtual unlimited power that was fueled by small amounts of dueterium (separated from sea water also), you could afford to extract gold from the water. Gold will likely do much better than other commodities though, oil and gas will all but disappear, except for plastics and lubricants there won't be much need.

If it wasn't LM you would laugh at someone saying they have a small fusion reactor design ready for an operational prototype in a year and commercial models in 10 but LM isn't a crack pot startup. If they make a claim like that it isn't automatically accurate but it's serious enough to give pause for thought. Worth thinking about but I wouldn't worry to much until they announce they actually have it sorted then sell your stack before people realise the connection and invest in technology stocks.

Still, as people have pointed out, fusion is always a few decades in the future no matter how many decades go by so I wouldn't stress about it to much now.

As for gold in the earths core, fusion aside, we will be regularly mining gold from asteroids long before we ever get a single drill head halfway to that depth and mining is MUCH more tricky than research drilling, hardly worth thinking about.

I read an article on that, yes they predict it will take at least 10 years for a working model and they estimate that one unit would be able to power approx. 80,000 homes. It would have a shelf life too though I wasn't able to find out how long one could last for.

So if LM were able to pull it off that's 10 years from now for a working model, I'd say at least another 10 years after that to be implemented into mining if they were able to do so which I doubt it, LM might be busy for decades after they get one working installing them in the US army's military, which I would say would pay better.

Even if they did sell units to mining companies to be used to power refineries I don't see it increasing output, just cutting power costs, but, the great thing about gold is it's future is not just pegged on power being expensive there are a lot of aspects of mining that won't change just because the power is cheaper not to mention a hundred other factors that influence the price of gold that are non mining related.

Plus there is also the cost of buying a fusion reactor and it's maintenance. The environmental benefits could end up taking the spotlight from the cost savings.

If LM can perfect one you can bet they'll be rolling them out everywhere they can, I'm sure the military will be first but they're a company that knows how to get maximum profit out of whatever they're doing.

I agree about other costs making traditional mining not being as impacted by fusion, energy being just one aspect of the cost, but I think boiling off and refining gold out of sea water using highly mechanized high energy processes replacing labor intensive environmentally damaging traditional land mining.

Still, if (great big massive if) they pull it off all sorts of things will be shaken up and you might find gold and silver holding up well against lots of other commodities.

 

[No1joey]

If LM do end up creating a unit that can refine gold straight from sea water in 10-20 years, the cost of running something like that might not significantly affect the price of gold at the time. The energy costs may not be relevant but the construction, running and maintenance costs could come close to those of a conventional mine. i.e we can refine gold straight from sea water it still costs $10,000 an oz or whatever gold price is in 10 years, same as a conventional mine, but we can do it without using oil or ripping up the earth, could end up just being a safer method of mining.

Or think how much sea water they would have to suck up to make an oz of pure gold. Maybe the environmental impacts could be huge, they might not even be allowed to proceed with it. Would they evaporate the water? They would have to return the sea water they are sucking up back into the ocean.

Besides the technology being 10-20 years away it will most likely never end up becoming a commercial operation, and if it did, it could end up not having a negative effect on golds price.