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No, we've never been running out. The government liquidating the strategic reserve distorted the price, but it will adjust. Helium is produced from natural ga
by Accujack 7y ago
No, we've never been running out. The government liquidating the strategic reserve distorted the price, but it will adjust.
Helium is produced from natural gas wells but with the prices for the gas where they have been for so long no one bothers to capture it - it's not worth it, it's just vented to the atmosphere and escapes.
So "running out of helium" basically means "running out of cheap helium and the price will go up until it establishes a balance with the cost of producing it from the ground instead of a government storage tank".
For as long as we get natural gas out of the ground, we will have helium.
- dogpuncher 7y agoThis squares nicely with my understanding of what "reserves" are when talking about extractive resources. Namely, the known quantity of a resource that can be extracted in an economical viable manner using current technologies. So there are a number of variables that can affect the size of a reserve that have nothing to do with how much of the resource is known to exist.
- RandallBrown 7y agoThe helium reserve they're talking about is an actual facility that stores helium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve
- abacadaba 7y agoSo what ~50 years? I often wonder what it will be like for the next intelligent species/civilization that develops on earth. With all the easily accessible resources already mined will get get stuck in the steampunk age? Sure there might still some left where we could find it with advanced equipment, but not if you're just starting out. Do planets essentially get one shot at advanced civilization?
- minitoar 7y agoThe 2nd shot is detailed in Dune.
- wishinghand 7y agoWhat do you mean by that? I don't remember the specifics of their "second shot" other than they had some sort of AI revolution that was crushed.
- krageon 7y agoI think that they are implying the civilisation of Dune is the second shot, and therefore the thought that there is only one shot is not correct.
- minitoar 7y agoYes, this was essentially my thinking, although I meant it at least partially in jest since Dune is of course fictional.
- wishinghand 7y agoI suppose I meant: what was the first shot that failed in Dune?
- gambiting 7y agoI think it's the exact opposite though - if we suddenly died out then whatever comes after us will have much easier, not harder time. We've already extracted so many natural resources that there is an abundance of them on the surface. You could build an entire civilization just using our leftovers, no need to dig iron out, just melt the hundreds of millions of automobile husks that will be everywhere. And there's still trillions of barrels of oil left in the ground, as well as loads of coal left.
- mschuster91 7y ago> You could build an entire civilization just using our leftovers, no need to dig iron out, just melt the hundreds of millions of automobile husks that will be everywhere. Not sure if this is practical. In contrast to ore which is basically rock and more-or-less pure iron (or other desired metal), automobiles are a wild mix of different alloys which would have to be extensively processed (if this is possible in the first place). With plastics, the situation is similar if not worse, given that not all plastics melt, and burned fuel is burned and cannot be recovered at all. The only thing where our civilizational waste can be used is if someone invents a Star Trek replicator clone.
- Beltiras 7y agoWell, we will leave a lot of concentrated radioactive material in dump pits. A bit like the dinos leaving oil in the ground just a lot harder to engineer easy ways of harvesting the energy....