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The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile
- mikeyouse 3y agoFeels more relevant than the 12th paragraph implies; The sale has been in the works for more than a decade. Congress first mandated it through the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013. It was initially supposed to occur in 2021, but a series of delays — in part due to the same logistical and regulatory issues threatening shutdowns today — postponed the auction to Thursday.
- ImAnAmateur 3y agoIt's up to those of us living today to decide to make the common rising baloon extinct. It's going to happen one day regardless. If we do it sooner, we get to use helium for medicine longer. I'm in favor, though sad, of a government ban. It should probably happen slowly so that no one's job is to empty canisters into the open air. Opinions?
- colechristensen 3y agoAlmost all natural gas wells just vent the helium they produce to the atmosphere. Helium balloons won’t ever be the culprit in a shortage. This is a plastic straw ban kind of issue, visible to people but pointless because the actual problem is elsewhere.
- metaphor 3y ago> This is a plastic straw ban kind of issue, visible to people but pointless because the actual problem is elsewhere. Curious, would you mind expanding on where you think the actual problem is?
- chii 3y agoif people are venting it away, it's because the people who would like to purchase it are not willing to pay the price. So the problem is that the uses of helium might not be commensurate with the cost of producing (or rather extracting) it. So therefore, the fix is to have the uses of helium pay more for it. Unfortunately, the payer of the uses of helium, such as for medical treatment recipients, do not want to pay more. As for balloons, the grade of purity is not sufficient for use in medicine, and thus is not realistically a problem (or the cost of refining it to higher purity is also costly).
- colechristensen 3y agoWith a long term view we would be stockpiling way more, requiring more efforts to recover used helium, and capturing more instead of venting in natural gas wells rich in helium. All of those things cost more though and aren’t being done because helium is cheap.
- spcebar 3y agoTo my recollection, plastic straws aren't anywhere near as prevalent or damaging in oceans as discarded fishing nets. That's the usual comparison here IIRC. But it seems to me it's a case of "we can do both", and in this case conservation of helium might not be a bad idea in addition to changing mining practices to capture it.
- petesergeant 3y agohttps://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics Suggests otherwise and is a fascinating read
- bagels 3y agoThe word "straw" do not appear in this article. The consumer plastic that is in the ocean is largely put there by large cities in Asia as the article points out. My plastic straws are going in to a landfill, not in to the ocean.
- PlunderBunny 3y agoI know you’re talking about oceans, but I see straws in the grass by the side of the road, in the garden beds in the park etc. up until recently (in NZ) they were plastic straws. Now they’re paper, and they will biodegrade if no-one picks them up. That’s a win. I also haven’t seen a plastic shopping bag stuck in a tree for a few years (because they were also banned here). Another win.
- colechristensen 3y agoOcean plastics primarily come from cities in less developed countries that don’t have any government waste management (and by that i mean garbage pickup) that just dump their trash in the local river. Your plastic straw doesn’t end up in the ocean unless you litter on a beach trip. Guilt tripped Americans eating fast food make up an unimaginably tiny amount of ocean plastic waste. It isn’t a “we can do both” situation for either matter. It’s a popular deception that makes people feel like they’re helping which almost entirely distracts from the actual issues. The “thoughts and prayers” response that is worse than useless.
- HideousKojima 3y agoThe overwhelming majority of terrestrial plastic that makes it into the oceans originates from 10 rivers, all of them located in Asia and Africa. Plastic straws in the US generally get safely disposed of in landfills and never reach the ocean or other waterways.
- otherme123 3y agoThe problem is helium cannot be contained, and it goes up until it leaves the Earth. It never binds to any element that could "anchor" it to our planet. Compare with liquid nitrogen: you can liquify air, use the nitrogen that sooner or later will go back to the atmosphere, but it rarely leaves the planet. So you have a cycle.
- justahuman74 3y agoWhat's a ballpark-estimate volume/weight that might get vented?
- neilkk 3y agoDon't have exact figures but it's a lot less than zero.
- ImAnAmateur 3y agoSo where is the problem? The rate of the mining? The efficiency? I would assume that helium baloons wouldn't be the culprit in a shortage because they'll be the first to go in a shortage. I assumed it was because the money made from helium baloons is responsible for higher rates of helium mining. I'm genuinely not going to know what you think the actual problem is if you don't tell me. I promise I tried looking it up before responding. Edit: I hadn't thought about purity requirements. Helium baloons do require significantly lower purity than medical uses. So how that lower grade stuff is treated as a whole is the part to consider, rather than helium baloon revenue.
- crotchfire 3y agoThe rate of radioactive decay, which is where subterranean Helium comes from.
- wakawaka28 3y agoThe problem is probably in processing and storing the helium indefinitely. We might wish we had the vented helium in 100 years or whatever. But unless it can be retained until the time it is needed (a fundamentally unprofitable venture to anyone alive now), it can't be used.
- ipsum2 3y agoHydrogen balloons are fun to pop.
- midasuni 3y agoCombine with candles on a cake
- WalterBright 3y agoHydrogen is a good lifting gas. The balloon only needs enough H to lift it. The rest of the balloon could be filled with nitrogen or CO2. The H concentration may be low enough to not burn.
- isoprophlex 3y agoThat is, I'm sorry to be so blunt, not a well thought out idea. The flammability range for hydrogen in air is 4% - 74%, and even though it ignites with difficulty at dilutions higher than 10%, you would still have to dilute it like mad in order to get a provably non-flammable lifting gas. 10% H2 in N2 is not good for lifting... let alone 4%. --- Oh, and, tri-atomic CO2 is very heavy (44 g/mol). So, waving the ideal gas law around, it really doesn't make sense to use that for lifting purposes at all when you have other, smaller things around.
- WalterBright 3y agoMy chemistry dates back to freshman chemistry long ago. So I am not a chemist. > The flammability range for hydrogen in air is 4% - 74%, and even though it ignites with difficulty at dilutions higher than 10%, you would still have to dilute it like mad in order to get a provably non-flammable lifting gas But it could not combust inside the balloon because H doesn't combine with N (at least I don't think it does!). It would have to be released, and then mixed with air to burn. If the balloon popped would it disperse faster than it could burn? I don't know, and simple chemistry would not provide an answer. One would have to do experiments.
- avgcorrection 3y agoAre you literally blaming this on helium balloons? For kids parties? We’ve already had half a dozen threads about the industrial uses of helium. Not relevant?
- WalterBright 3y agoJust use hydrogen.
- neilkk 3y agoSurely this (unlike many other environmental and social issues) is effectively solved by price? If helium balloons cost $100 each vastly fewer of them would be sold. If they cost $100 but you could get $90 back by bringing them back to the store for the helium to be recycled, much less helium would be consumed. If there is a limited supply of helium for essential medical use, the price should rise until either demand is affected or less of it gets discarded by hydrocarbon extractors. If this doesn't happen we are probably ok.
- orev 3y agoPrice is driven by the market, and the market has a very short timeframe where anything is relevant (it generally only cares about the timeframe when the transaction is taking place). However the management of helium as a resource needs to be thought of as “the entire time that humans will exist on Earth”, since it’s an almost completely non renewable resource where after using it once it’s often lost forever.
- UberFly 3y agoThe article didn't say but I hope there are restrictions on Messer as to where they can sell it.
- latchkey 3y agoI've been thinking for decades now that creating my own stockpile of helium would be one of those crazy stories that would end up being insanely profitable. Akin to Elon making reusable rockets. I read about counter arguments saying that helium is easy enough to source that it is really just an issue of the price/extraction ratio. Because of that, making your own stock pile company doesn't make sense. Then, I read articles like this, that make me think it has nothing to do with the price/extraction ratio and everything to do with government control of production. Obviously, I'm never going to do it, but it is a fun thought exercise anyway. I will add though, I've been seeing these helium stories cycle a bit more recently. I wonder what phase we are in.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoReusable rockets aren't profitable. They're a gimmick to skirt around NASA government contract requirements.
- weregiraffe 3y agoThis is complete nonsense.
- MrYellowP 3y agoWhy do you believe it's not profitable? What about all that material cost sunk into the rocket, that they don't have to spend again for a new one?
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoThe cost of rebuilding the "reusable" rocket from scratch after every launch is orders of magnitude more expensive than the cost of material.
- weregiraffe 3y agoThis is complete nonsense again. Perhaps you think USA still uses Space Shuttle?
- Sparkyte 3y agoHelium 2.0 is about to be released that is why. /S
- clumsysmurf 3y ago> The sale has been in the works for more than a decade. Congress first mandated it through the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013. What did the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013 try to solve?
- jedberg 3y agoIn case anyone was wondering, the reason this was mandated in 2013 was because the government was causing private reserves to go out of business by flooding the market with cheap helium. It was believed that a private owner wouldn't do that by keeping the price high (and the law mandated a higher price until the reserve was sold).
- exe34 3y agoSince the law already mandated a higher price, why did it still need to be sold?
- happymellon 3y agoThat seems like such an odd move. Why not just not flood the market with cheap helium?
- wakawaka28 3y agoIf the resources are so mismanaged as to lose money, the taxpayers have to pay for it. The government with all its vast resources could put most businesses out of commission because it has no obligation to be profitable. What if helium is cheap and relatively abundant though? Like the way we treat water. Even water has to be sold at a (preferably low) profit so that all the facilities and infrastructure around it can be maintained. In some cases the government does end up paying for water infrastructure but this is often initial setup costs that would be too huge and risky to provide affordable water to small communities if the true cost had to be paid by them in a reasonable time frame.
- LarsDu88 3y agoThings that we currently undervalue: - Helium - Brazil nuts - Peat moss
- mock-possum 3y agoSell me in the other two.
- LarsDu88 3y agoBrazil nuts trees take over 50 years to grow. When they reach full size the nuts are so massive and so high that they can kill people walking below. The native habitat of the Brazil nut is getting burned down every year to make way for cattle grazing. Oh and did I mention they only grow in the rain forest and are not cultivated by farms, but rather harvested in the wild? Is this nonrenewable miracle nut worth thousands of dollars then? No, it goes into mixed nut compilations at Wal-Mart Peat (the dead stuff, not the live moss) takes THOUSANDS of years to grow. Once used up it cannot be replaced within human civilization time scales. So of course we burn it for electricity and use it to grow potted plants...
- alex_young 3y agoHelium is a byproduct of natural gas production. Only a few wells are even setup to capture it because of the associated economic cost. If we really care about conserving helium we would probably not vent it directly into the atmosphere while extracting natural gas. Party balloons are not the problem here.