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You can extract helium from natural gas. An estimated 54 billion cubic feet (1.5×109 m3) of helium was detected in Tanzania in 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/w

• kobeya 10y ago
  Yes that is where all helium on earth comes from: trapped ground sources, often in natural gas and oil deposits. Alpha particles from the Earth's radioactive core propagate upwards and get trapped somewhere in the earths crust, where we find them. But it took hundreds of millions of years to create macroscopic amounts of helium, so once all the sources in the ground or tapped it's gone, on human timescales at least. And you can't recycle from the atmosphere because it escapes the Earth's gravity.
  • kijin 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure we could make more helium if we really needed it. Nuclear fusion produces helium as a waste, and I expect fusion to become widespread before we run out of natural sources of helium on Earth. We already rely on nuclear reactors to get several elements that are used in radiotherapy. IIRC there was a major shortage of medical isotopes a few years ago when a Canadian reactor that used to supply most of them was shut down. Of course, it will be expensive, so no more cheap helium balloons for our grandkids. For specialized applications, though, we can afford some artificial helium.
    • Faaak 10y ago
      A big difference between radionuclides and helium is that radionuclides are only needed in a relatively "small" quantity (producable by fission). Nuclear fusion would create helium but in very small quantities. Having 1TWe of fusion reactors would only yield 5grams of helium/second. That is not much.