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We Discovered Helium 150 Years Ago. Are We Running Out?
- lend000 8y agoI was unable to find the actual breakdown of helium consumption by application, but I assume party balloons are pretty high on the list. Most of the other commercial uses (such as in medicine, welding, diving, etc.) tend to use smaller amounts of helium and do not lose the helium after one usage. This seems like a great example of something where market prices will sort make helium balloons obsolete before helium starts to become too cost prohibitive for its more 'important' uses.
- watwut 8y agoMarket prices will not solve helium, because helium price is kept artificially cheap via some subsidies.
- klipt 8y agoIs there a market for helium futures?
- jandrese 8y agoI think it is the opposite. Party balloons are a relatively small consumer of helium. https://geology.com/articles/helium/uses-of-helium.gif https://geology.com/articles/helium/uses-of-helium.gif It is lumped into the "other" category on this chart. One of the problems is that our helium supply comes as a byproduct of the oil and gas industry so as we switch to renewable energy sources the yearly supply will diminish even as demand increases. So party balloons may become unaffordable but that won't affect the total demand very much. Or maybe we'll have far more exciting party balloons filled with hydrogen gas instead.
- hx2a 8y ago> far more exciting party balloons filled with hydrogen gas instead. Far more exciting, of course, because the balloons will explode. My kind of party!
- throwaway5752 8y ago"One of the problems is that our helium supply comes as a byproduct of the oil and gas industry so as we switch to renewable energy sources the yearly supply will diminish even as demand increases." Unlikely. It is not a byproduct of the oil industry. It is very specifically a byproduct of the gas industry. NG is the least carbon intensive fossil fuel so it's likely to lag. Further, you can separate and reinject.
- xoa 8y agoOne question that chart brings to mind though is what is the loss/recapture/reuse rate for those various uses? Many clearly involve atmospheric venting so they're just a loss, but I'd imagine cryogenics at least must often have at least the potential for reuse of parts of it. Party balloons are a 100% loss though, so even if they're only a lesser fraction of that 13% "Other" category (7%? 4%?) every bit that goes there ends up vented so I could see that adding up over time vs others. Ideally proper pricing would help take care of this but that's pretty hard for something like helium.
- bwann 8y agoHelium is also used in liquid fueled rockets to pressurize tanks and some pneumatics. I can't image how much we sent to space in the Apollo era alone.
- GW150914 8y agoThis story seems to resurface every few months, and the answer to the question of whether or not we’re running out of the second most common element in the known universe is still “No.” It is true that most helium is the byproduct of natural gas production, and demand for Helium is rising while (hopefully) demand for fossil fuels will dwindle. It is also true that Helium may become more expensive if we keep wasting it on party balloons. That is not the same as “running out” however, and we’re not running out of it. Maybe someday the media can honestly reflect reality in this case with a headline that talks about being less wasteful of a valuable resource so that it doesn’t become painfully expensive, rather than framing in terms of actual scarcity on Earth. It’s also one of those areas where the market can probably handle this because few people will be willing to pay big bucks for a single party balloon. Given that balloons are harmful to the environment to begin with, letting that tradition naturally die off seems like a win-win. Edit: As another poster has pointed out, natural gas subsidies are a problem, which artificially depress the price of Helium. That is still not “running out” though.
- adrianN 8y agoHelium might be the second most abundant element in the universe, but that doesn't say much about the abundance here on Earth and how much of that can be feasibly extracted.
- throwaway5752 8y ago"second most common element in the known universe " How about here on Earth? Since it doesn't chemically bond to other elements, the gas form escapes the atmosphere and is blown away by solar wind, effectively lost forever. All that we have is the byproduct of nuclear fission that is prevented from reaching the atmosphere by stratigraphic trap. It has that reservoir characteristic in common with natural gas, but as we know Carbon is much more reactive and goes through the carbon cycle. We could run out of Helium in any practical sense.
- gameswithgo 8y agoYou seem to be getting very upset over the phrase "running out" vs "painfully expensive" when the former can easily, and often is, interpreted as the latter, and articles which talk about a resource "running out" usually describe what they mean by that, therein. I too tend toward pedantry but I try to stop myself and say "I can be technically correct all the time or I can be sane"
- siruncledrew 8y agoIf helium is “running out” then shouldn’t we have some sort of embargo on wasted helium uses like balloons? Or are consumer product uses of helium not a significant dent in the supply?
- savanaly 8y agoCan we not let the market sort it out? If we don't interfere in the free trade of helium and plausibly commit to never do so, the current price will always be the best estimate of the future price that we have, discounted by the expected interest rate. And thus if we are going to be running out and that is going to cause a shortage, the price will go up now and incentivize conservation.
- epicureanideal 8y agoMarkets aren't perfect in situations like this.
- js8 8y agoMarkets cannot incentivize conservation. They are designed to maximally use all available resources. In most cases it's a good thing, but in few cases it is catastrophic. (Think about it - the more is the resource being conserved, the more relatively abundant it becomes, and the cheaper it becomes in the market. The conservation of resource can only be done if it's use and extraction is punished, and free market only gives positive incentives.) (That's why the markets cannot solve global warming for example, and that's why free market fundamentalists are often unable to believe that global warming is happening.)
- akshayB 8y agoNaturally Helium is produced due to radio active decay of radio active elements but all nuclear reactors also produce Helium as a by product which can be captured (worse case most expensive scenario). I am also bit confused by the fact that Helium is so cheap and easy to buy, why haven't the price sky rocketed yet. You easily order a decent size tank of Helium for $50 online.
- mchannon 8y agoHaven't been able to verify your claim "all nuclear reactors also produce Helium as a by product". While Helium manufacture is a given for about all forms of fusion (if fusion ever takes off we'll barely be able to supply our party balloon demand since there's so little material needed for fusion). Fission (as one would find in a nuclear power reactor) does not appear to generate helium. Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 appear to be the major products, the former eventually turning into Barium-137 (no alpha decay), and the latter eventually to Zirconium-90 (no alpha decay).
- yorwba 8y agoPoking around on Wikipedia, it appears that fission and its byproducts indeed do not generate alpha particles, but the enriched uranium and plutonium also undergo alpha decay, so simply collecting lots of fissile material in one place should produce a noticeable amount of helium.
- dfggdfsfsdfs 8y agoThat's how He is made < natural decay of alpha emitters getting trapped in NG wells. It works on a geological scale, but not in industrial scales < the decay rate is too low.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- scythe 8y agoI thought we recently discovered a huge amount of helium in East Africa: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/28/huge-helium-gas-tanzania-east-africa-averts-medical-shortage https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/28/huge-helium-...
- woliveirajr 8y agoSometimes this discussion arises, and as I remember it, there are two kind of "Helium" that should be discussed. The first case is the common helium, used to fill up baloons and so on. It is mixed with many others gases, it is common, the price is very low, and despite being used to many things, it isn't running out, supplies aren't getting empty. The second case is the "helium" as a pure gas, composed by helium and nothing else (except for traces of other gases). This is rare, this is expansive, this is hard to get (and it costs a lot to extract pure helium from the atmosphere). This is the helium that we are "running out", despite being able to extract it from sources, as the price might and will increase.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nradov 8y agoNo there's really only one kind of helium, with varying levels of purity. Even balloon helium is usually almost 100% pure. Helium is never extracted from the air; there isn't enough of it there to be practical. We get it as a byproduct of natural gas extraction.
- saagarjha 8y agoIsn’t balloon helium mixed with oxygen so that children don’t suffocate inhaling it?
- nradov 8y agoThat has been tried occasionally but it isn't common. Suffocation isn't a real risk since once you pass out you'll drop the balloon and breathe air again, although if you're standing up you might fall and hurt yourself. Most retail gas suppliers prefer to sell only pure gasses. If they have to do custom mixing it requires extra processing steps for blending and analysis, plus they're taking on additional liability. So you can probably get heliox if you ask, but you'll pay more for it. Gas suppliers keep all their helium in one big set of storage tanks. The only real difference between various helium grades they sell is how careful they are about pulling a vacuum on your cylinder before filling it.
- ww520 8y agoCould the helium shortage spurt a race to mining on the Moon?
- ben_w 8y agoUnlikely. Even if it was easy and convenient to mine and transport as moonrocks (it isn’t) the helium would have to be more expensive than gold to be worth the cost.
- war1025 8y agoAn interesting thing I learned a few years ago, don't remember where exactly, is that when people say things like, "We only have x years of material y left", what they are actually saying is that the known sources of that material will last for the next `y` years. There is almost always another way to get the raw materials, it just doesn't currently make sense to look for them because there are existing sources that are already available and meeting demand.
- adrianN 8y agoWe know how to make Helium using fusion, so we'll never "run out". However we'll definitely run out of Helium that is cheap enough to fill your hard disk with.
- nradov 8y agoAs a scuba diver I often use >2000 liters of helium on a single open circuit deep dive. I feel kind of bad about wasting a (mostly) non-renewable resource but with rebreathers still being expensive and dangerous there isn't any good alternative.
- benzofuran 8y agoYou’re doing high percentage trimix deco dives and still see rebreathers as dangerous?
- nradov 8y agoYes there's a lot more that can go wrong with rebreathers. Open circuit is much more forgiving. As long as you can breathe you can stay alive. No single mistake will kill you and there are multiple opportunities to fix any problem. Whereas with a closed circuit rebreather there are failure modes which are essentially "silent" (or at least easy to overlook in a stressful situation) that can kill you quickly. Most rebreather deaths involve some sort of diver error, but I don't trust myself to be perfect every time.
- benzofuran 8y agoI’d recommend giving them a shot - I honestly feel way better after rebreather deco than OC. Portable gas blending is awesome. If you’re using a rebreather properly and have sufficient bailout, they’re pretty reliable these days. You can switch to OC for sanity breaths if you see an issue and use the draeger ball-gag mouthpiece if you’re concerned about O2 hits.
- wallstquant 8y agoIf we ever get fusion it should produce he as a byproduct. So dive away and pray for fusion to come someday.
- cm2187 8y agoAnother interesting market is the isotope helium 3 [1], which has various medical applications, and which only industrial source is the natural decay of radioactive material in nuclear weapons, which need to be "purged" regularly to collect the helium. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3
- philipkglass 8y agoThe atmospheric noble gas concentrations, in ppmv: Helium 5.24 Neon 18.18 Krypton 1.14 Argon 9340 Xenon 0.087 http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/Fundamentals/AtmosphereCompIII.pdf http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/Fundamentals/AtmosphereComp... Krypton is rarer in the atmosphere than helium (by molar/volume concentration), though more abundant by mass. Krypton is commercially produced by atmospheric separation. I would therefore expect helium sourced by air separation to cost roughly 1/4-1/5 the cost of krypton production, per liter, or 4-5 times as much per gram. A quick search on Google shows krypton at 65 cents per liter in the early 2000s (according to an article about windowpane gas filling). An Alibaba search indicates that 10-15 cents per liter may be more typical now. If those krypton prices are accurate, and I haven't made any major mistakes with my helium ballparking, I would expect that applications like helium filled hard drives would see only a tiny cost increase should they be forced to use helium separated from the atmosphere. I think that most cryogenic cooling applications would have to move to closed-cycle reuse of helium. I don't know about welding and leak testing. EDIT: "The Energy-Related Applications of Helium", 1980 report from Los Alamos National Laboratory, specifically considers helium production from atmospheric separation and from lean natural gas streams in section X. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5141581 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5141581 A.W. Francis has discussed the recovery of helium from the atmosphere by conventional methods. He predicts that, for helium produced from the atmosphere as a by-product from air separation plants, the cost would lie in the range of $200 to $300 per Mcf in 1973 dollars (over ten times present cost). ... To go further and separate helium by similar techniques but with helium as the primary product would raise the cost by more than another order of magnitude to about $7000 Mcf in 1980 dollars. Apparently one Mcf is 28,317 liters in SI units. That's 24.7 cents per liter of helium from the atmosphere in 1980 dollars, or 80 cents per liter in CPI-adjusted 2018 dollars.
- egypturnash 8y agoI just get Error reading 'isEmpty' on type com.nationalgeographic.componentry.sling.model.promo.BetaRelatedContentListPromo Cannot serve request to /content/science/en_US/2018/08/news-helium-mri-superconducting-markets-reserve-technology.html on this server Here's the latest Wayback Machine link for it: http://web.archive.org/web/20180820221804/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/08/news-helium-mri-superconducting-markets-reserve-technology/ http://web.archive.org/web/20180820221804/https://www.nation...
- morganvachon 8y agoI got that too, reloaded a few minutes later and it was fine.
- coldtea 8y agoWell, concern about Helium consumption has reached a high pitch.
- patient_zero 8y agoone of the links in the article leads to congress's passing of the helium privatization act of 1996. could the fragility if the helium markets be a self inflicted wound?
- WindowsFon4life 8y ago...They say in high pitched voice.