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This is fear mongering. Helium production is a byproduct of natural gas production. If we're not running out of natural gas we're not running out of helium.
by alex_young 7y ago
This is fear mongering.
Helium production is a byproduct of natural gas production. If we're not running out of natural gas we're not running out of helium.
There are plenty of reasons to quit extracting natural gas, but that's a separate matter.
- saagarjha 7y agoIt’s not quite separate if there are clear signs we may be begin curtailing our natural gas extraction sometime in the future.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoDevils advocate but if all natural gas use was made obsolete by nuclear or some magic renewable... we’re still going to mine natural gas for the helium then as the primary product. Just like imo we’re going to use every drop of oil for plastics, lubricants, composites, military and legacy applications.
- OJFord 7y ago> if all natural gas use was made obsolete by nuclear or some magic renewable... Helium is a by-product of nuclear fusion. Magic indeed!
- marcosdumay 7y ago> Helium is a by-product of nuclear fusion. Fission too. Yet we are not collecting it. It's not clear if the same problems will apply to collecting it from fusion.
- tapland 7y agoHelium is a by-product of fission, but the product of fusion. The formation from alpha-particles around fission reactions (and the amount being like 100g/year?) makes it not very worthwhile to collect.
- OJFord 7y agoWhat's the distinction between product and by-product then? I called it a 'by-product' because it's not the product we're actually aiming for, not the point of the exercise - if oxygen were produced instead (by whatever science-ignoring magic) we wouldn't mind.
- tapland 7y agoBut in Fusion what we are doing is intentionally creating helium. It's the mechanism we want. In fission it's a byproduct in that it's not our main intention.
- marcosdumay 7y agoWill fusion produced helium be cleaner than fission produced one? The answer looks very simple until you remember it is produced inside a container, that may of may not contaminate it.
- mcv 7y ago> "we’re still going to mine natural gas for the helium then as the primary product" I don't see why. The US has for quite some time been trying to get rid of its helium reserve. Helium has plenty of interesting uses, but it's not valuable enough to justify mining natural gas just for the helium.
- jml7c5 7y agoThe price of helium will rise as the supply is used up. Does helium/natural gas mining simply cost too much to make up for any reasonable change in price?
- dec0dedab0de 7y agoOnce the US gets rid of it's helium reserve wont helium become much more valuable?
- saagarjha 7y agoI’m hopeful we’d figure out a way to make strong alpha emitters or fusion feasible before then.
- ben_w 7y agoIt’s an interesting question: given current tech, which is a cheaper source of helium? 1. Fusion 2. Fission byproducts 3. Catching the solar wind 4. Mining the atmospheres of gas giants
- chii 7y agomining the gas giants. The amount of matter in fusion, or created by fission byproducts is minuscule. unless we do so much fusion that the absolute amounts become close to the amount of natural gas.
- hutzlibu 7y agoWith current tech? none really
- ben_w 7y agoPerhaps “less expensive” would have been a better way to phrase it…
- simias 7y ago>[...]given current tech[...] >1. Fusion I appreciate your optimism but unless you're talking about harvesting the fallout of fission bombs fusion probably won't be a practical source of helium for quite some time. As for harvesting gas giants imagine the costs involved to send a ship close enough to one of these monsters to harvest a significant amount of helium, then manage to escape the gravity well and make it back to us. That would probably be end up being the most expensive substance on earth.
- Retric 7y agoITER would produce 150kg of helium a year in steady state operation. It’s not clear how close to that’s it’s going to be, but it’s going to be producing some helium unlike those other methods mentioned. Of course that’s currently only worth ~6,000$ so it’s not being collected. But, if that’s the only option at 100,000x current prices it might be used. Hypothetically, if 30% of the world’s electricity was generated by fusion they would be producing ~350,000 kg of helium per year. Still well below current production, but also not an insignificant amount.
- faeyanpiraat 7y agoIf we mine the same amount of gas, and discard the natural gas part, then shouldn't the price of helium go up?
- reportgunner 7y agoSorry, but how does one discard natural gas ?
- ashildr 7y agosee [Wikipedia: Gas flare](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare)
- smcl 7y agoI would simply collect the helium (e.g. in a net, or tupperware box) and discard that which is not helium or place it carefully back where I found it
- de_watcher 7y agoPut it in a yellow bin.
- hwillis 7y ago> Just like imo we’re going to use every drop of oil for plastics, lubricants, composites, military and legacy applications. Still a pretty open question. Those uses are powerfully subsidized by the fuel applications- aside from military use, all the things you listed add up to <2% of all oil. There is a massive oversupply. Oil processing involves reforming molecules catalytically into other forms of hydrocarbons. It's not just separation. If fossil prices increased substantially, it would be very difficult to predict if natural hydrocarbon sources would be cheaper. Natural oils are quite cheap but narrowly distributed, unlike crude oil, and form different mixes when reformed by various processes. The bottom line you should take away is that we absolutely don't need oil. We could replace it totally with natural sources using essentially our current product chain (eg steam cracking facilities) at a very reasonable cost. It's far and away the smallest problem with not using oil. To put that in context, it's a smaller problem than making steel without coal/coke, which is a solved problem. India makes nearly all their steel with natural gas. I'll also point out that silicones are much better products for most lubricant and plastic/rubber uses. Oil is cheap and usually inferior, except for most engineering plastics.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago> I’ll also point out that silicones are much better products for most lubricant and plastic/rubber uses. Oil is cheap and usually inferior, except for most engineering plastics. Oh? What industry are you in and do you have a source for that statement? Because you see car oil synthetics are preferred over mineral maybe? Because 20 years in automotive and composites says that’s full fantasy. Just ONE example off the top of my head, carbon fiber, is almost entirely oil. It’s a oil derived plastic that’s burnt and spun and burnt again while being treated with more oil. It’s non-recyclable and pretty damn dirty, I’ve yet to see a carbon that was oil free, but please let me know when you have found one!
- pmoriarty 7y ago"I've yet to see a carbon that was oil free, but please let me know when you have found one!" Well, off the top of my head, there's diamond and charcoal. Not to mention the carbon that's in all living things.
- hanniabu 7y agoAlso if rates of production and consumption aren't the same (not saying this is the case). If we consume 0.1 lbs of helium for every 1.0 lb of natural gas, but only produce 0.05lbs of helium for every 1.0 lb of natural gas then the helium byproduct from natural gas is not sufficient to meet demand.
- NopeNotToday 7y agoSupply will equal Demand at some price. If prices rise, some recreational use will go away.
- Vraxx 7y agoBut that might also price out plenty of much better uses for helium as well if they are less funded than those with recreational demand. A market is not always a good way to allocate resources, especially in cases like this where the use cases are so wildly different in utility
- hanniabu 7y agoI'm not talking about price. I'm strictly referring to: "Helium production is a byproduct of natural gas production. If we're not running out of natural gas we're not running out of helium."
- NopeNotToday 7y agoYou can't speak about Supply (running out) without factoring in Demand & Price. They are all linked together. Especially when the resource has recreational uses.
- scotradamus 7y agoThis most certainly is not fear mongering. Helium is a non renewable resource. We used to discuss this all the time in the laboratory I used to work at.
- rimliu 7y agoSun is also non-renewable. But it will not matter for a while.
- nickik 7y agoWhat a non renewable resource we have run out off?
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoJust because you have yet to die doesn't mean you're immortal.
- nickik 7y agoThere have been smart asses talking about Peak Caol for 250 years. We are going towards going on 70 years of Peak Oil. There were widespread scares in the 70s about all kinds of metals running out because of 'Overpopulation' (another nonsense concept that people repeatly dig out. In the 60s there was a believe that fission materials was incredibly limited. In the 90s and 2000s there was an actual beleive that there were not enough 'rare earth' materials. And we had for a long time a clear economic explaition why this happens. Its well understood but somehow the same ideas are repeated all the time. And your example is horrifingly bad, because if we were talking about humans there would be a mountain of evidence that in fact humans are not important. However in the whole history of the modern world we have never actually run out of a non-renewable resource. Even when supposedly the smartest people predicted it over and over and over and over again. At some point this is just idiological bable unsupported by even the slightest amount of evidence and should be treated as such.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
- boomboomsubban 7y agoThough I agree that it is a resource we need to conserve, this article only uses data from before the discovery of the Tanzania helium deposits. Leaving them out makes me wonder why they wrote this article.
- heydabop 7y agoThe headline being "Will we run out?" vs "We are running out" made me assume this was going to be the case.
- thekingofh 7y agoThe rule still stands: Any headline with a question mark at the end can be met resoundingly with the answer - "No".
- hannasanarion 7y agoNot this one. The answer is yes, we will run out of helium, it is one of the few truly non-renewable resources. You can use chemical processes to make methane or petroleum-equivalents, and coal can be replaced with charcoal, but once all the helium atoms have drifted off into space, they're gone forever. It just won't happen soon.
- Accujack 7y agoFYI, our sun is also going to go out. Just so you can plan ahead.
- amanaplanacanal 7y agoWe’ll be able to fuse our own before that happens. Or go fetch it from elsewhere.