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Huge helium discovery 'a life-saving find'
- awjr 10y agoGiven the scarcity of this stuff, we really need to be looking at this in terms of centuries and maybe tight controls are still a good idea.
- dijit 10y agoNah fam. I need my balloons. /s But really, how do we deal with a public who feels that they are entitled the stuff, and companies willing to sell it to them because it's more profitable?
- fredley 10y agoWe have the means already: government controls on their stockpiles, and different tariffs for different uses of the gas.
- gutnor 10y agoThe thing is if this is so rare and so precious, why is it cheap enough to put in balloon. Now obviously I get that it is not currently rare, but that once it gets rare that's going to be a big issue. But there are people whose job is to prepare for the next 100 years. Those are governments. Shouldn't they just buy the whole lot of it while it is cheap, that's good use of public money if you know your country is going to need the stuff. The newfound scarcity should push the price of helium outside of regular human entertainment budget.
- organsnyder 10y agoIn the United States, we've had the National Helium Reserve since the 1960's. Unfortunately, the decision was made in 1996 to privatize the reserves, starting in the mid-2000's. That's much of the reason for the scarcity we face now.
- tragomaskhalos 10y agoThe year is 2800; An alien spacecraft lands to survey the blasted and ashen ruin that was once home to over 7 billion sentient beings. The mission commander, with infinite sadness, reports their findings to his superiors: "They let the market decide".
- jackweirdy 10y agoBut because of the helium, they presumably say it in a very high pitched voice.
- melling 10y ago7 billion? We're going to be close to 11 billion by the end of the century. That's a lot more birthday parties, graduations, etc. Don't forget the other effect on sea life when they're released near water: http://balloonsblow.org/impacts-on-wildlife-and-environment/ http://balloonsblow.org/impacts-on-wildlife-and-environment/
- throwanem 10y agoMeanwhile, from Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and Barnard's Star, the expeditionary fleets of the First Great and Bounteous Human Empire set forth once more to conquer. (Hey, it's not any more or less plausible than what you said.)
- sethrin 10y agoPredicting the consumption of a scarce resource is extremely plausible, and there are many historical precedents. Predicting that interstellar travel will ever be in any way economically advantageous is probably unphysical. With travel time for messages taking decades and travel taking centuries, your "Human Empire" would be more along the lines of "Human-descended collection of exceptionally bad pen-pals". The speed of light and the tyrannies of the rocket equation don't really allow for anything else.
- sliverstorm 10y agoThe US helium reserve which supplies most of world helium was ordered to liquidate & shut down by 2010, so it is being sold way below cost.
- mikeash 10y agoWho are these people whose job it is to prepare for the next 100 years, and where do they work? I really think there should be such people, but I didn't think there really were any.
- pmarreck 10y ago> The thing is if this is so rare and so precious, why is it cheap enough to put in balloon. The price is literally held down by law (at least in the United States). Because people need to have their birthday balloons. Which is stupid as hell.
- paulryanrogers 10y agoEducation?
- jessriedel 10y agoStrong property rights that can be counted on to be respected over long timescales, and an efficient futures market. But step number one is accepting that for sufficient interest rates and sufficiently long times, the efficient outcome is not necessarily conservation.
- gpvos 10y agoThinking that such a level of market efficiency is attainable is utopian thinking. There will always be enough short-sighted people to thwart this. Also, why should we accept that?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jessriedel 10y ago> Thinking that such a level of market efficiency is attainable is utopian thinking. There will always be enough short-sighted people to thwart this. This mechanism has a tremendously better track record than the other ones proposed in this thread. No mechanism are perfect, but we should try to improve the working mechanism rather than use the broken one. And there don't seem to be any fundamental barriers in the way. > Also, why should we accept that? For the same reason we should accept other Pareto improvements: if you're doing otherwise, you're letting value go to waste.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago> Also, why should we accept that? Because at least entertaining that outcome is the only rational thing to do if you believe in attaching values to things and doing math on them? Right now people forecast about a 4% real (inflation-adjusted) rate of return on long-term investments. If the helium isn't going to be worth ~5 times as much 100 years from now, then it's more valuable to the world at large if we use it now than to wait 100 years, and we can make up the difference later. If you've got good reasons to attach particular values to the helium in 100 years, or the helium now, or the value of anything else investable in 100 years, then by all means do share, and tell us why everyone else in the market has it wrong (externalities the market participants are inflicting on others, perhaps? that's the classic reason). Then we can look at the math, and challenge each others' assumptions, like rational people in a rational argument. Otherwise, you're just attaching an irrational, spiritual value to the idea of conservation itself, and indicting everyone who doesn't share these values as heretics. While this may be a useful heuristic, it isn't always the best way to discuss a matter.
- rimantas 10y agohttp://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/06/18/were-really-not-about-to-run-out-of-helium-no-please-stop-it-were-not/#3602ae871cf0 http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/06/18/were-real...
- arviewer 10y agoThere are two types of helium. Helium 4 is useless except for balloons. It's cheap and there's a big supply. Helium 3 is just 0,000137% of the total, is important for science or stuff, and this is not sold for balloons.
- jessriedel 10y agoI think this is wrong. Helium 3 is indeed needed for dilution refrigeration, which is a quite advanced cooling method. I believe it is mostly only used in laboratories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator However, regular helium (whether truly pure helium 4 or the naturally occurring mixture which is 99.9998% helium 4) is still an extraordinarily useful cryogenic liquid for less advanced cooling, having nothing to do with dilution fridges, in a wide range of scientific and industrial contexts. It also has other niche uses like arc welding, inert gas environment, helium-neon lasers, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Applications
- dogma1138 10y agoThat's incorrect, Helium 3 is what is used for most applications and it's what we are in near dire shortage off. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41419.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41419.pdf
- jessriedel 10y agoYour link just describes a few other industrial uses for helium 3 besides dilution fridges, mostly having to do with neutron absorption and nuclear polarizability (which aren't exactly household needs). This is a good contribution to this conversation, but it doesn't shows at all that helium 3 is "what is used for most applications". For the vast majority of industrial and scientific usage of helium, helium 3 does not offer much advantage.
- timlyo 10y agoWhat makes it useless/helium 3 useful?
- samch 10y agoYes, but hydrogen balloons add a whole extra dimension of fun and excitement. Inert gasses are boring.
- DonHopkins 10y agoFun, excitement, and humanity. Never forget the humanity.
- gozur88 10y agoIs hydrogen really that dangerous in small quantities? The Hindenburg had seven million cubic feet of the stuff, and half the passengers still survived.
- wvenable 10y agoWe tested this in science class -- a balloon sized quantity of hydrogen makes a very forceful explosion. Safe enough to be used in the middle of a classroom but not something you'd want small children carrying around.
- gozur88 10y agoSure, it makes a "very forceful explosion" when confined. It's not the same scenario, though.
- ajuc 10y ago> how do we deal with a public who feels that they are entitled the stuff We increase the price. By taxing it for example. Capitalism deals with the rest.
- sliverstorm 10y agoSeriously, I don't understand how strongly people seem feel about balloons. To hear some tell it, they are just as much a fundamental human right as clean water and sanitation.
- pmorici 10y agoSounds like it isn't so much scarce as we use so little of it compared to what has been historically available that no one has bothered to seriously spend time exploring for it until now.
- amelius 10y agoWe can always find some more near the top of our atmosphere :)
- pcl 10y agoAs it turns out, helium (and hydrogen) will escape Earth's atmosphere, so there's not a whole lot up there either. Here's a great Quora post on the escape process: https://www.quora.com/What-makes-hydrogen-and-helium-and-atoms-alike-flee-the-Earths-atmosphere-and-not-be-bound-by-gravity-sufficiently-to-stay-down https://www.quora.com/What-makes-hydrogen-and-helium-and-ato...
- tomp 10y ago> Now, a research group [...] has developed a brand new exploration approach. The first use of this method has resulted in the discovery of a world-class helium gas field in Tanzania. Hm... One try, one hit. Maybe it's not that rare after all?
- devishard 10y agoOn helium rarity: helium can easily be produced by nuclear reaction. That's expensive, of course. But if we raise the price of helium to prevent depletion of resources, helium will be expensive too. Given we have a way to make it, we aren't going to run out of the stuff, so I just don't think this problem is that dire.
- InclinedPlane 10y agoEven if the entire world switched over to fusion power and efficiently recovered Helium from it that still wouldn't meet worldwide Helium demand.
- lostlogin 10y agoHigh temperature superconduction would solve the MR need. Link to a novel and smelly bit of super conduction.
- NickM 10y ago> helium can easily be produced by nuclear reaction I think you may need to rethink your use of the word "easily" there. There are some good comments here, which explain why satisfying current demand for helium via fusion is nowhere near practical: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/12r2s7/helium_is_a_product_of_nuclear_fusion_could_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/12r2s7/helium_i...
- dogma1138 10y agoHelium is also a product of nuclear decay/fission. That's how we got the big stockpiles in the first place. Helium is produced naturally in any radio isotope that undergoes alpha decay.
- XorNot 10y agoNo the big stockpile was paid for by cold war stockpiling, and it's cheap now because congress has mandated a sale of a huge quantity with no floor price consideration for that cost.
- rnnr 10y agoWe run out of things we could possibly run out of!!!
- AKifer 10y agostart a race and the next big thing will be a Helium bubble
- JakeWesorick 10y agoIf helium is so important and rare why do we put it in balloons?
- chimeracoder 10y ago> If helium is so important and rare why do we put it in balloons? Same reason why we use potable water (an expensive resource) to flush our toilets - some mixture of laziness, lack of awareness, apathy, and cost.
- zymhan 10y agoPotable water is not expensive everywhere. Also, laying a second, redundant network of water pipes so that we can flush with "gray water" would be ridiculously costly. In buildings that can recycle their own water, gray water systems work, but it's a whole new problem to retrofit buildings with one.
- mikeash 10y agoThat's a pretty good analogy. Both cases represent an insignificantly small usage of their respective resources, gain attention merely because they're immediately visible in our lives, and act as a distraction from the real problems. For water, agricultural use vastly outweighs the use from flushing toilets. For helium, medical and industrial uses far outweigh what goes into balloons.
- zymhan 10y agoI think your analogy is better than GPs, as you actually framed the issue in terms of proportional consumption.
- zymhan 10y agoPart of it is because the US government directed the reserve to sell Helium off to pay it's debt. We were using Helium decades ago though, I'm not sure why the price has always been cheap enough to justify using it as a party favor. One would think it would follow a typical supply/demand curve at some point.
- executesorder66 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_Unite... I found those interesting reads as well. I did not know the US had the largest supply of Helium.
- aexaey 10y agoHelium [...] is critical to [...] MRI scanner Is that still the case, now that high-temperature superconductors are available, which work just fine while being cooled with much cheaper liquid nitrogen instead of requiring liquid helium?
- hangsi 10y agoI can only guess that the price of replacing an MRI scanner is more than the expected difference in operating cost of nitrogen vs helium. Everything I know about MRI suggests that the machine itself is fairly pricy.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agoI can only guess that you don't understand that after there is no more helium, the operating cost of helium doesn't exist either. idiot.
- akiselev 10y agoNot at all. MRI machines have huge start up costs but that doesn't mean they cost any less to run because making and storing liquid helium is orders of magnitude more expensive than liquid nitrogen. According to [1], for a new MRI from the manufacturer, it costs about $2 million for startup costs (capex and training) and another $2.5 million over the next 5 years for operating costs. Considering these things easily last 20-30 or more years the lifetime cost of an MRI will be an order of magnitude greater than the acquisition cost. Don't know how accurate this document is but it fits my experience of about $1 mil start up with $0.5-1 million per year operating costs. [1] http://proimagingservices.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/How-Much-does-it-Cost-to-Operate-an-MRI.pdf http://proimagingservices.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/How...
- tomw2005 10y agoI have a higher up comment but cryogen free magnets exist now. They still need water and electricity but much cheaper than the cost of helium (ant the cost of the nitrogen around the helium).
- FunctionalMan 10y agoCan't we put hydrogen in our balloons?
- mark-r 10y agoI wonder how accurate the estimate is for the size of the find? They say it was "independently verified", but if they were paying the bill for that verification they might have simply gotten what they wanted to hear.
- desireco42 10y agoIt just should be more expensive, that is all. That is at least my understanding of the problem.
- Animats 10y agoThe "huge helium discovery" needs to get more real first. The startup Helium One has not yet drilled a well.[1] They're prospectors only at this point. You can read similar gold mining prospector reports if you're into that sort of thing. [1] http://www.helium-one.com/projects/ http://www.helium-one.com/projects/
- mmaunder 10y agoThe rift valley where this was found cuts straight through the Serengeti, one of the largest and most awesome national parks in the world. I hope this doesn't tear that area up.
- dlio 10y agoWhat is it about the MRI/superconducting applications that precludes recapture?
- randyrand 10y agoWhat percentage of helium goes into the residential balloon market? Just curious.
- perilunar 10y agoWhat is wrong with people — why would you ever use BCf instead of kg? Same with barrels (oil) and kWh per day (power? energy? I get confused with all the different time units in there). Use SI units FFS.
- microcolonel 10y agoMeasuring Helium by mass might produce numbers which seem underwhelming to a common audience.
- gaur 10y agoI agree that Bcf is idiocy, but kWh is straightforward. And the hour is accepted for use in the SI.
- nradov 10y agoI guess we'll be able to continue using helium mixes for open circuit scuba diving for a few more years. Hopefully that will allow sufficient time for rebreathers to become cheaper, simpler, and more reliable. I do feel bad about wasting a limited resource every time I go diving.