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On 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 re
by devishard 10y ago
On 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.
- dogma1138 10y agoYes that stockpile we got was mainly from US and later Russian cold era nuclear weapon production and research. What's your point exactly?
- flubert 10y agoThe Strategic Helium Reserve is a consequence of WWI and the desire to not be subject to shortages of Helium for lighter-than-air craft during wartime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve
- dogma1138 10y agoThe strategic reserve is for Helium 4 primarily, were talking about Helium 3 which is a rare isotope of Helium.
- jonas21 10y agoThat's untrue. The stockpile comes from gas fields -- helium is mixed in with some natural gas deposits, and can be extracted from it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_Unite...
- dogma1138 10y agoThat's incorrect, you are confusing between Helium-4 and Helium-3. The main source for Helium-3 which is the one we are in shortage of was and is the US nuclear weapons program primarily through the decay of tritium. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41419.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41419.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Helium-3_and_tritium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Helium-3_and_tritium
- flubert 10y agoAs near as I can tell, you are the only one discussing helium-3 and its shortage. Maybe everyone should be talking about helium-3, but unfortunately they are not. Suggestions?
- mikeash 10y agoWithout knowing how the rate of production compares to the rate of depletion, this is meaningless. Oil is continuously produced by decaying life interacting with geological processes, but that doesn't matter when it's being used many orders of magnitude faster than that happens.
- dogma1138 10y agoThe main source for Helium 3 was an is the US nuclear weapons program, primarily the stockpiles of Tritium which produces 8000-10000 liters of Helium 3 each year. The increased demand post 9/11 primarily by the federal government (He3 is used in neutron detectors) combined the reduction of the US weapons program caused a shortage. Here is the FAS report from 2010, it's not the only report on the matter but it is very detailed. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41419.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41419.pdf
- mikeash 10y agoYeah, but Helium 3 is a totally different beast with different uses. Helium 4 is far more abundant and that's the one people are using to fill balloons and cool MRIs and purge lines and all the rest.
- phkahler 10y ago>> Helium is produced naturally in any radio isotope that undergoes alpha decay. Why not call it helium decay, since alpha particles are just helium nuclei? Or is this a case of "alpha particles" being named that before we knew what they are?
- euyyn 10y agoYes. Beta decay is positrons, and gamma radiation is just light. Hence why we call the energetic end of the spectrum "gamma rays".
- valarauca1 10y agoYes. Alpha Decay is just a low mass form of cluster decay.
- nikdaheratik 10y agoBecause He nuclei are not the same as He atoms since they are not electrically neutral. Also, they generally have higher energy after being released from the larger Uranium or other atomic nucleus which causes them to behave differently from an He nucleus that wasn't released as an alpha particle. This all is important in terms of tracking what happens to subsequent decay reactions.
- myblake 10y agoI think we're talking about alpha decay gaining a few electrons here, not fusion.
- cjslep 10y agoI don't think synthesizing alpha-decaying nuclei would be practical. Neither would be refining them into higher concentrations. Plus it wouldn't stop the He-3 shortage.
- fsloth 10y agoAre you thinking of alpha decay? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_decay I'm not sure there is any conceivable way to use that in manufacturing helium gas at an industrial scale.
- WildUtah 10y agoHelium can be easily retrieved from the atmosphere by fractional distillation. It leaks up into the atmosphere from the radioactive core of the Earth and forms naturally from solar radiation in the upper atmosphere, keeping atmospheric concentration high enough. We get gasses like Argon and Neon the same way all the time. There is no helium crisis and there will never be a shortage in the next billion years. The situation where Helium is much cheaper than Neon may end but there will always be plenty for industrial and science uses, even if balloons get more expensive.
- dharma1 10y agoWhat would it cost if extracted from air, considering only five parts per million are helium? The number I've seen is 10,000 times as much as currently. Solar radiation producing helium in the upper atmosphere - how would you extract it from the upper atmosphere? I would have thought it doesn't mix with lower atmosphere due to atmospheric escape.
- ars 10y agoCombine it with CO2 extraction (you'll get CO2 anyway so you might as well do something good with it) and the money to do it might be there.
- bduerst 10y agoHow many tonnes of CO2 would you get per ton of He? Market price for pure CO2 is only about $160 per ton. Market price of helium is like $45,000 per ton or something like that.
- freehunter 10y agoSerious question: how do you weigh something that is lighter than air?
- lhecker 10y ago
- DonHopkins 10y agoI always assumed the floating robots in Fallout used super-strong Nuclear Helium to keep afloat.
- gadders 10y ago"The best cure for high prices is high prices."
- DorintheFlora 10y agoBut if we raise the price of helium to prevent depletion of resources, helium will be expensive too. Although artificially raising the price of diamonds seems to have been an effective strategy for the diamond industry, that is in part because they found a marketing angle where the high price of a diamond engagement ring is a strong emotional signal between a prospective couple. In most markets, people simply are not going to pay more for something than it benefits them. Raising the price can have the consequence of pushing people to go look for other alternatives. Price has to be reflective to some degree of underlying value or benefit. Further, if creating helium comes at the cost of destroying more real value than it creates, this is simply a lose-lose prospect across the board, regardless of the price tag you can attach to helium.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago> can easily be produced by nuclear reaction > That's expensive, of course You need to pick one.