The original dream of the alchemists was to turn base metals Into gold, however its quite obvious that after that becomes cheap and easy it becomes basically useless since much of golds value comes from its rarity.

But suppose the alchemists had achieved the ability to convert between different metals (ignoring that this is basically impossible IRL) what applications would this be used for in the real (modern) world? The obvious ones that jump out at me are turning a ton of lead into plutonium or producing things like the chromium or the rare earths cheaply but I'm sure there are plenty I haven't thought off. What sort of applications would there be for alchemy like this? Or for the dramatically increased availablity of Currently expensive materials like REE, silver etc...

The original dream of the alchemists was to turn base metals into gold, however it's quite obvious that after that becomes cheap and easy it becomes basically useless since much of gold's value comes from its rarity.

But suppose the alchemists had achieved the ability to convert between different metals (ignoring that this is basically impossible IRL) what applications would this be used for in the real (modern) world? The obvious ones that jump out at me are turning a ton of lead into plutonium or producing things like the chromium or the rare earths cheaply but I'm sure there are plenty I haven't thought off. What sort of applications would there be for alchemy like this? Or for the dramatically increased availability of currently expensive materials like REE, silver etc...