It's much cheaper than it should be if we're considering hard limits on available supply and lack of interchangability of other resources. Honestly it shouldn't

It's much cheaper than it should be if we're considering hard limits on available supply and lack of interchangability of other resources. Honestly it shouldn't be cheap or expensive, in a perfect world it would be regulated, but here we are. It's so cheap that it's commonly used as a welding cover gas as a way to reduce electricity cost and to squeeze more work out of cheaper, lower power equipment. Recycling in the form of capture of storage boil-off, or even collection/retention of helium that can be safely vented from legacy equipment costs substantially more than just throwing it away forever. But it's useful in ways that nothing else is. MRI is the biggest example, and the largest consumer of helium. There's a whole niche of magnetics that needs helium until science comes up with better magnetics, if that's possible. Something that doesn't get a lot of detailed attention is leak detection, because there's nothing else that leaks nearly as well (hydrogen molecules are larger than helium atoms!), not to mention safely, as helium. A leaking vacuum jacket means substantial loss of insulation and increased boil-off. Leaking storage of gases is always dangerous - either it's flammable, or poisonous, or an asphyxiant because it's not oxygen, or it is oxygen and everything else is on fire. The process of using helium used for leak detection involves introducing helium into a vessel and looking for helium on the other side. The leak detector itself is a portable mass spectrometer. Leak detection and repair is an extremely rare skill set at any meaningful level of quality, depends on extremely specialized equipment, and it's as expensive as it sounds. If there was a better option, this leak detection niche for helium would be an academic novelty. Anyway, if this helium source is what it claims to be, it's significant - about 60 years of current production. https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/helium-statistics-and-information https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/helium-statistics-and-info...