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As far as I know, it's not a shortage of helium, it's a shortage of cheap helium. Back when blimps were a thing, the US stored a shitload of helium in a big ca
by RandallBrown 8y ago
As far as I know, it's not a shortage of helium, it's a shortage of cheap helium.
Back when blimps were a thing, the US stored a shitload of helium in a big cave. In around 2007, the US government was like "We don't need all this helium" and started selling off the reserve at super low prices.
Helium is often just vented to the atmosphere when mining natural gas, so we could capture it if we wanted, but right now it's not really worth it since we still have some cheap helium sitting around.
- im3w1l 8y agoSo the solution to the contradiction is that it is possible to store helium after all.
- NikkiA 8y agoYou can 'store it', but it leaks over time. If you were to buy 10 billion cubic metres of helium today as a hedge on prices rising in 10 years, you may well return to find that you have significantly less in 10 years time. The ways it's 'stored' are a) in large [very] deep caves, which is the sort of investment an individual cannot generally make as you don't own your property to the centre of the earth. b) in cryogenic thick walled tanks with the understanding that you will lose helium constantly, but are able to replace it with new helium. This requires a 'constant' resupply of helium, plus energy expenditure in the form of keeping it cryogenically chilled. This isn't a 'long term' storage plan, and assumes that helium prices stay low. c) by extracting it from the ground - this is how we get helium on earth as it is, we find it in pockets alongside natural gas at reasonably great depths. This is essentially tapping into the planet's own version of method 'a'. Method 'a' is the only real 'long term storage' we can do, and even then it leaks as long as there is some method to remove it again from the storage.