10 ms·
We may not be running out of helium after all (2015)
- nmstoker 7y agoIf this is correct then it's good news for those balloon based internet projects which always stuck me as short sighted in light of the view at the time that helium was running out
- mwilliaams 7y agoThat’s no problem, those balloons could always just use hydrogen!
- i_am_nomad 7y agoMaybe you’re joking, but really, why not? They’re unmanned, and so a catastrophic failure is much less of a concern. If helium scarcity is a serious enough problem, then by all means, full those blooms with H2 and launch them from a safe zone.
- FlyMoreRockets 7y agoThe problem with hydrogen is that it is a much smaller molecule than helium and leaks from light, thin-walled containers like balloons. Heck, it can even leak along grain boundaries in metal containers.
- stickfigure 7y agoHelium leaks too, just at a slower rate. Hydrogen is cheaper to top up.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jfk13 7y agoIf you're trying to keep a massive network of balloons aloft to provide wide-area internet connectivity, the logistics involved in topping up the gas mean that the frequency of top-ups required may be a greater concern than the cost of the gas involved.
- NikkiA 7y agoChemical (non-electrolysis) hydrogen generators are a thing, although not directly useful for larger scale needs like the fuel cell hype, they are adequate for topping up balloons.
- yummypaint 7y agoWe are still running out. All this claims is that we may have a little more in reserve than previously thought. Helium still floats up into space unrecoverably when released. The article contains this information, but the headline is wrong.
- perl4ever 7y agoAccording to the first source I found, helium escapes into space at about 50 grams per second, for the entire planet. It seems at least possible that it is being produced at a greater rate than that, by radioactive decay. http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Catling2009_SciAm.pdf http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Catling2009_SciAm.pdf
- lidHanteyk 7y agoAs I have heard it, the cost of recovering helium from the upper atmosphere is daunting and nowhere near reasonable prices.
- gamblor956 7y agoFor now...until it becomes rare enough to be worth the cost.
- jeffdavis 7y agoHow is that relevant? If the production is happening deep inside Earth, we can capture it before it makes it to the atmosphere.
- mnky9800n 7y agoThe problem is that we stopped doing exactly this leading to the shortage
- aaron695 7y ago> We are still running out. Citation needed. > Helium still floats up into space unrecoverably when released The sun also burns unrecoverably, we don't say solar is running out. https://www.gasworld.com/global-helium-summit-2018-closes/2015512.article https://www.gasworld.com/global-helium-summit-2018-closes/20...
- theandrewbailey 7y agoHow was helium extracted to build those reserves in the first place? (Fractional distillation of liquid natural gas?) Is that simply not viable or cost effective anymore?
- pkaye 7y agoI believe a lot of the US government stockpile of helium was from nuclear reaction byproducts.
- corprew 7y agoit's removed from "natural gas" when they make LNG. the amount generated by nuclear reaction byproducts is trivial by comparison. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022311570901923 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022311570...
- eximius 7y agoSo it'll be running out of helium that will make it finally cost effective? /s
- tedsanders 7y agoYou're thinking of He3 isotopes. Standard He4 is a byproduct from natural gas extraction.
- corprew 7y agoHelium has a lower condensation temperature than Natural Gas, so when they make liquid natural gas for shipping, they can take out some percentage of the helium relatively easily and more with difficulty.
- anoncareer0212 7y agoThis is from four years ago – anyone have a substantive update?
- simulate 7y agoIt's ironic that Earth is running out of the second most abundant element in the universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...
- moneytide 7y agoIsn't helium expected to be a byproduct of commercial fusion?
- seiferteric 7y agoCommercial fusion does not exist, and the amounts of helium would be irrelevant.
- moneytide 7y agoIndeed it doesn't, hence "expected". The concept of extracting helium as a byproduct of a reaction with high energy output is akin to taking the lye from wood ash and processing it further as an electrolyte (potassium hydroxide) for NiFe batteries. I suppose even the irrelevant amounts of helium resulting from this process would also be ruled out when seeking out new sources since fusion is still in the experimental phase. Bottleneck seems to be materials (superconducting/temperature?)
- FlyMoreRockets 7y agoYes, but not in appreciable amounts. 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...
- jay_kyburz 7y agoStill seems a waste to pump it into party balloons. What are going to do in a few hundred years time when we use these new reserves. Seems a little selfish to just let them worry about it when the time comes.
- jowday 7y agoI remember reading somewhere that the amount of helium used in industrial processes vastly outweighs the amount used for party balloons.
- f5thesystem 7y agoNuclear fusion can provide all the helium we could need in the future.
- DennisP 7y agoFusion produces such a large amount of energy for such a small amount of fuel, it's unlikely to be a significant source of helium. However, controlled fusion would let us build fantastic rockets, so we could harvest all the helium we want from the outer planets.
- adrianN 7y agoA fusion reactor produces what, a few dozen grams a year?
- f5thesystem 7y agoAre you asking about current reactors or ones in the future that are powering civilization and fusing hydrogen continuously?
- majewsky 7y agoThe energy consumption of the entire human race was about 146,000 TWh per year in 2015 [1]. That's 26 times more than before the industrial revolution. Since energy usage will still rise for a while, let's generously assume for now that the hypothetical future civilization will consume 10 times more than the 2015 value, or 1,460,000 TWh per year. (I'm assuming that population does not grow more than currently anticipated. I think this is fair because I later compare the number to our current Helium production which probably would scale up as well if the population were to significantly increase.) The proton-proton chain reaction, the process that creates Helium-4 by fusing hydrogen plasma, releases 26.73 MeV of energy when creating a single helium atom out of 4 hydrogen atoms. [2] The molar mass of helium-4 is 4.002602 g/mol [3]. With this, we can do a quick trip to our favorite unit-aware calculator, units(1), to find how much Helium would be produced if our hypothetical future civilization used hydrogen fusion for all its energy needs: (1460000 TWh / year) / 26.73 MeV / avogadro * 4.002602 g/mol = 8157132.36 kg / year Since Helium is a gas, it is more commonly measured in volume, so let's multiply that with its density at STP of 0.1786 g/L [4]: (1460000 TWh / year) / 26.73 MeV / avogadro * 4.002602 g/mol / (0.1786 g / liter) = 45672633.63 m^3/year Most Helium is produced by the United States (78% market share as of 2008 [4]), so let's just use their current production numbers as a comparison. > Helium production in the United States totaled 73 million cubic meters in 2014. [5] That's 60% more than what would be produced by the future fusion reactors in my scenario. While it's true that I made a generous assumption by inflating the energy usage 10-fold, it appears that covering our Helium needs with fusion reactors is way more attainable than I imagined. We just need to cut back on wasting Helium a bit. The biggest "if" is, of course, if and when fusion reactors become economically viable. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-en... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton%E2%80%93proton_chain_reaction#Energy_release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton%E2%80%93proton_chain_re... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_atom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_atom [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_Unite...
- Razengan 7y ago"We" will run out of everything, eventually, as long as we live on only one planet.
- cookingrobot 7y agoNot at all. Most stuff stays on the planet after we use it. Oil turns to plastic which gets put in a landfill. If you ever want that carbon back you can just go get it. Used helium floats up to the top of the atmosphere and blows away into space never to return. At the current rate of use we’ll run out of helium in the next few generations, and then that’s it. After that if you need helium you’ll have to get it from another planet.
- jdnenej 7y agoHow did the helium get here to begin with?
- facesonflags 7y agovery uplifting news
- LeonB 7y agoLevity not appreciated.
- war1025 7y agoA thing I learned several years ago that makes a lot of these "running out" articles less troublesome is that having "X years" of reserves for a compound really means "The places we have bothered to look are sufficient to fill demand for X years." When the reserves start getting low, you go look in some other likely place, and lo and behold, Y more years of reserves!
- Matticus_Rex 7y agoMore precisely, the peak [insert resource] arguments boil down to "at the current price and level of technology, there is X amount of this resource left." Of course, as the supply diminishes, the price goes up, and it becomes cost-effective to harvest that resource from more expensive places and with more expensive means, AND the incentive to improve the technology for extraction/identification or invent new technology for new types of extraction is increased.
- rflrob 7y agoBut it is inarguable that there is a finite and ever decreasing amount of {helium,petroleum} in the earth. While we may not now be at peak [insert resource], and may not be in your lifetime or mine, such a point must exist and I would bet that the children of today’s newborns will be alive to grapple with the consequences of it.
- BurningFrog 7y agoThe Earth is finite, as is the time until the Sun will swallow it, so "it's finite" it true about literally every resource. It seems more a way to fuel depressions than a useful way to analyze anything.
- RomanBob 7y agoBut then things are more expensive. For those who cannot afford, expensive things might as well not exist. So although more precise, it deflects from the fact that the important aspect is economics.
- sunkenvicar 7y agoScott Adams’ law of slow-moving disasters continues to predict the future.
- Taniwha 7y agoWoo! Hoo! let the helium rush begin (spoken in a high squeaky voice)
- Taniwha 7y agoSeriously though what they seem to be saying is that there's somewhere up in the Rockies where you might be able to dig a helium well
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoCouldnt some dragfish atmospheric mining by the ISS recapture the helium? Also shouldnt it spiral out by other planets (venus)carried by solarwinds- and collectable via a electro magnetic scoop?