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Are we really running out of helium?
- ghshephard 12y agoStealing my own comment from HN on this: That article reads a lot like "Peak Oil" concerns. There is a lot of Helium available - [1] The global reserves of helium are known to be approximately 41 billion cubic meters. Most of them lie in Qatar, Algeria, the USA and Russia. Annual global production of helium is about 175 million cubic meters, and the USA remains the largest producer. " Regardless, this is something the market can correct for very, very easily. As helium supply becomes more scarce, the price will go up, resulting in greater supply. Most of it comes from natural gas, and is so cheap [2] it's not worth capturing. Oil trades for around $100/barrel. Helium trades at $100 for a thousand cubic feet (albeit in gas form) Some of the problems with Helium is that Physics experiments use a LOT, and previously was so cheap that it wasn't worth trying to conserve. That's changing - [3] A recycling system can recapture about $12,000/year of lost helium for a single scientist. From reading articles - apparently the problems isn't so much that the cost of helium is increasing - but that it's been so cheap because of the US Natural Reserves making it completely non-competitive to capture - they are basically giving the stuff away for next to nothing. [1] http://www.gazprominfo.com/articles/helium/ http://www.gazprominfo.com/articles/helium/ [2] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/airgas-increase-prices-helium-20-164550580.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/airgas-increase-prices-helium-... And on Friday, the bureau announced that it was raising the price for a thousand cubic feet for crude helium from $84 to $95 [3] http://www.nature.com/news/united-states-extends-life-of-helium-reserve-1.13819 http://www.nature.com/news/united-states-extends-life-of-hel...
- TeMPOraL 12y ago> Regardless, this is something the market can correct for very, very easily. This is something I don't really trust. We see that with oil and environmental concerns - when things get scarcer, subsidies start, distorting the price. Should we really put our hopes in the market, praying that it will save us?
- ghshephard 12y agoThe many billions of dollars invested in tar-sands in Canada were a market response to the increased price of Oil. They wouldn't have existed at $25/barrel Oil, but were inspire by $75/barrel Oil. I'm strongly arguing that if the price of Helium shifts from $100/1000 Cubic feet to $1000/1000 Cubic feet, that we'll likewise see similar market responses in terms of production of Helium. And we'll see radical moves towards recycling also.
- acjohnson55 12y agoAnd thank god for the mining of the tar sands, am I right?
- happyscrappy 12y agoCan you heat your house with righteous indignation?
- deciplex 12y agoWill you need to heat your house in the first place, in 100 years?
- TeMPOraL 12y agoDo I want to heat my house that much if it means my children will die in poverty on a planet that went to hell? Maybe I'd want to at least switch to a different heat source?
- baddox 12y ago> Do I want to heat my house that much if it means my children will die in poverty on a planet that went to hell? Yes, you probably would, because even if you don't heat your house, it's unlikely that your individual decision will have any measurable affect on the condition of the planet in the future.
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- ptaipale 12y agoSimilar answer: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/27/what-great-helium-shortage/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/27/what-grea...
- ilitirit 12y ago> Oil trades for around $100/barrel. Wavering around $55/barrel at the moment.
- Retric 12y agoWhile the US dumping its helium supply was utterly stupid and distorts the market terribly. 41 billion cubic meters / 7 billion people = less than six cubic meters per person on the planet, and when it's gone it's gone. That does not sound so hot.
- rquantz 12y agoYes. People who respond to shortages of non renewable resources by saying, "I'm not concerned. Actual peak oil is 40 years further down the road than these people think it is" don't seem to grasp that that is not actually a lot of time.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoThis also doesn't take into account that we price helium for birthday balloons at the same price as helium for MRI machines.
- ganeumann 12y agoI advocate switching to hydrogen for birthday balloons. "Blow out the candles! Blow them out, quick!"
- ghshephard 12y agoCompletely agree that dumping the helium supply was short sighted - better approach would have been to auction it off in 5 billion cubic meters/lot, perhaps every 5 years, and let the market set a price.
- sliverstorm 12y agoAt the end of the day we have to count on the market, but I still hate that the helium reserve has depressed the price so much that we are just throwing away the helium in natural gas wells.
- codingdave 12y agoYour arguments could be nitpicked, but lets skip that and just take as a given that you are 100% correct. That doesn't change the fact that helium is a non-renewable resource. Conservation makes sense. Maybe it won't matter to us today, or even in 40 years. But it will matter to someone else in 140 years. In my mind, any decisions made based on markets are a short-term strategy. If a resource is non-renewable, I prioritize conservation. Where practical, I use renewable resources.
- dbbolton 12y agoLet's just hope we've perfected hydrogen fusion by that time. Then we'll have as much energy and helium as we want!
- aaron695 12y agoA good example on how bad quora is. The top current answer is basically > there is no way to cheaply make more Which applies to anything in existence, everything will run out, hence a pointless waste of time statement that moronic philosophers pull out when they are ignorant on the topic. Later links are more interesting, like - http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/27/what-great-helium-shortage/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/27/what-grea...
- emodendroket 12y agoAre you denying the existence of any distinction between renewable and non-renewable resources, or what?
- beeworker 12y agoIt's a tempting thing, given the sun will eventually burn out.
- emodendroket 12y agoYeah, OK, but the linked piece is not arguing that we're in danger of running out of helium in thousands of years.
- SRasch 12y agoTo quote my own answer on that question: No: we will never run out of helium, it's just a question of price (which is likely to go up). There is a method of actually producing helium: as a product of nuclear decay, smaller quantities of helium (He) could be made in nuclear power plants. Nevertheless, as @ghshepard says, in the short and medium-term supply will simply come from other natural gas fields if/when the price goes up. The Helium-scarcity misunderstanding is the same as with almost every other historical feared resource depletion. At current prices and production methods, supply is finite, but at higher price points, new production methods become economically viable. A higher helium price means two things: reduced demand by shifting to substitutes and increased production by using more expensive production technologies (and of course, if the price goes up more people will try to innovate cheaper solutions). Today helium is practically free. While we would never run out of Helium, it is not unlikely that at some point prices may go up for a while. That, however, is not really such a big deal. http://www.quora.com/Are-we-really-running-out-of-helium/answer/Sondre-Rasch http://www.quora.com/Are-we-really-running-out-of-helium/ans...
- ghshephard 12y ago...And conservation/re-use. Right now, scientists just let the stuff blow off into the atmosphere during experiments because it's basically free. Increase the price, and it's worth modifying the experiments to reuse their Helium.
- omegaham 12y agoGood ol' Julian Simon to the rescue, again. We will always come up with some alternative. "We're running out of X" is always louder than "We've found another way to extract it, sound the alarms again in forty years." Then we'll come up with some other method, and they'll set back the Malthus Doom Date by another forty years. And eventually, someone will come up with a completely different alternative that doesn't use it at all, and a previously vital resource will only have niche applications. Of course, in some cases, the alternative might require a lot of hardship. I'm sure we'd get by if gasoline was 20 bucks a gallon. It would suck, and all of us would be driving motor scooters and riding bicycles to work, but we would get by.
- tomlock 12y agoRare earth metals were talked about in a similar manner very recently. Other sources were found, and as a result, the alarm eased. One thing about rare earth metals is that they can be a byproduct of metal production, but this process is often ignored because the cost of the additional step can be more expensive than the resulting output. One thing people seem to not know is that helium is a common discarded byproduct of oil extraction. Nuclear fission in the earth's core produces it, and it gathers in porous underground oil reservoirs. I'd bet my life that as prices of helium go up, these deposits get more attention paid to them. I'm not convinced that a shortage of helium will be a crisis.
- alephnil 12y agoRare earth metals are not that rare. Most of them are about as abundant as copper. The problem is their extraction. While copper is present in relative high concentration in sulfide ores that are easy to extract, rare earths are usually present in dilute concentration in many rocks, making it less economical to extract, and is hard to extract even when there is a significant portion of it, leaving behind much toxic chemicals. Furthermore, the rare earths are very similar to each other and often present together, which makes it hard to separate them. In addition, such ores often contain thorium and its decay products, which makes tailings radioactive. The shortage of rare earths has been because it has been uneconomical to extract with any sort of environmental regulation in place. China has almost none of them and has obtained a near monopoly for that reason. Here the "there is no shortage ever" arguments from economists make sense. For helium, the situation is different. The helium that is there is relatively easy to extract (it is a certain percentage in some natural gas fields), but once it is gone it is gone forever.
- darkmighty 12y agoExactly. It's hard to grasp, but most other elements have gradual scaling solutions, i.e. worst case we have to resort to some more expansive extraction method. With helium this scaling is abrupt: reserves become orders of magnitude more expansive. It makes total sense to let the market create a gradual scaling of prices in anticipation for depletion. Basically all other elements we can do some recycling and recapturing somehow; once leaked helium is just gone forever.
- vilda 12y agoSimilar concerns were raised when China embargoed rare metals. In reality, the industry adapted smoothly and it's not the topic anymore. And yes, strictly per economic theory (which is very practical) we will never run out of Helium. Just the price will rise up to the point when alternatives (and a research into) will became economical.
- maaaats 12y agoOne part of this I've never understood: I'm often told that I shouldn't buy or enjoy helium balloons, as it's a waste of important helium. But such a balloon costs almost nothing, if helium is so scarce and so important, shouldn't that be reflected in the price? At least that's how stocks work. If something will be in high demand/price in the future, it will shift and be in high demand now.
- Tepix 12y agoSame thing with Tuna - why is it still so cheap to buy a can of Tuna?
- draugadrotten 12y ago"Markets" only work when there is a seller, and neither helium nor tuna have a seller. The price of Tuna is set of "how expensive is it to produce a can of tuna" rather than "how many tuna are left in the ocean". In fact, the lower the production cost of tuna fishing, the higher the risk that we empty the ocean of all the tuna. It's really a problem of the Tragedy of the commons. There is no cost of tuna in the ocean, except the cost of fishing it. So it's a commons, and it will be overexploited. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons also: be sure to understand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northw...
- fennecfoxen 12y agoTuna from the ocean at large may be a "commons", sure, but helium comes from natural gas deposits, which tend to be in areas where one nation or another claims exclusive rights to said deposits, treats them like property, and seeks to maximize the value they can extract from them (while still competing with other resource-holders in a market).
- codesuela 12y agoAFAIK just big tuna is expensive, like a large whole fish. What you get in the cans are small tuna.
- sschueller 12y agoOn a tour at CERN I was told that 1/3 of the worlds helium is 'stored' and used at CERN. Can anyone confirm this?
- madaxe_again 12y agoIn terms of total helium in circulation at any point - this isn't an unreasonable assertion. They use vast quantities of the stuff to keep superconducting magnets and power transmission lines at operational temperatures, and the LHC is far from being the only experiment at CERN.... But on further examination... helium is about 0.1785g/l 1 cubic foot = 28.317 litres So 1 cf. of He has a mass of ~5.05g Cern use 120 metric tons of He in the LHC beam tube magnets alone (http://home.web.cern.ch/about/engineering/cryogenics-low-temperatures-high-performance http://home.web.cern.ch/about/engineering/cryogenics-low-tem... ), so let's say 200 tons at all of CERN, as the beam tube magnets are a pretty major application, and the other accelerators (PS/SPS/etc.) are considerably smaller and slower and have less intensive requirements, and other experiments altogether probably use a fair, but not crazy amount. So... 200 tons of helium equates to 200000000/5.05 = 39.6 million cubic feet, at STP. So, lots and lots of helium, but not 1/3 of the world's supply. Oh, fun fact - that amount of helium would be enough to lift 1100 tonnes of payload from the ground... about two fully laden 747s.
- drinchev 12y agoOfftopic This post is a proof that the right time of a post is crucial to popularity. I posted the same link ( actually I'm not sure how HN passed this one through ) a couple of months ago [1] and it was not as popular ;) 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8884999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8884999
- j1z0 12y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong but are not hydrogen and helium two of the most abundant elements in the galaxy? If we ever were to let it all float into outer space (if that's even possible) by then couldn't we just harvest it in space? I know that's by no means cost effective with today's technology but we're talking decades before we might actually run out right.
- dredmorbius 12y agoHydrogen has a high affinity for bonding with other elements. Most notably water (H2O) and in varying ratios, with carbon (hydrocarbons). Both water and hydrocarbons, along with other forms, are heavy enough to not escape from Earth's gravitational pull at a high rate (though some estimates suggest that a large fraction of Earth's original water has been lost to space). Helium is on of the noble gasses -- they either do not react or react only very reluctantly with other elements. Combined with helium's low molecular weight, and since gaseous helium is atomic helium, free helium tends to escape into space. And as Douglas Adams noted: Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space. There's little chance that pure gold could be profitably recovered from space. Let alone helium.
- dredmorbius 12y agoFor those interested in helium's price history, cost per thousand cubic feet, 1999 - 2011 rose from $42 to $160, or 3.8x. http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/helium-prices.jpg http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/helium...
- Spooky23 12y agoI purchased about 30 helium-filled balloons for my 3-year old's birthday party for about $10. So I would say that no, we're not running out of helium, by any meaningful definition of "running out".
- Fomite 12y agoI do some work for a helium supplier, and yes, yes we are. Some problems were averted by not shutting off the helium reserve a year or so ago, but the industry is definitely starting to face the question of what happens when helium supplies become limited. Kids balloons aren't a particularly high demand use.
- chc 12y ago400 years ago, somebody went on a hunting trip and killed a bunch of dodo birds. What you're saying is kind of similar to that guy saying, "Eh, I killed 30 of the beasts and nobody tried to stop me. So I would say that no, the dodo is not in danger of extinction."
- mark-r 12y agoThe passenger pigeon would be an even better example. To quote Wikipedia, "The species went from being one of the most abundant birds in the world during the 19th century to extinction early in the 20th century."
- andrewchambers 12y agoMaybe not on a balloon cost metric, its probably talking about industrial/scientific processes.
- amelius 12y agoI guess we can find most of our helium near the top of our atmosphere :)
- gilbetron 12y agoThis is one of those questions I use to see if sites know how to research a topic. We have proven reserves to last at current consumption rates for 300 years. A little googling leads you to the facts, which is that we have plenty of helium to last a long, long time. A plant is coming online that will provide nearly the entire planets consumption of helium for then next 50 years. And this is just with places where we know we can get helium out of the earth. We put helium in balloons because it is so cheap because of abundance. It is almost as bad as when I hear cries of the "coming phosphorus shortage".
- copsarebastards 12y agoBetteridge's law holds.
- lemoncucumber 12y agoFor the last time, you idiot: it's not hydrogen, it's HELIUM! And what about that are you still not getting, exactly? Well, obviously the core concept, Lana!
- emodendroket 12y agoSounds like we better keep using it for party balloons.
- nradov 12y agoAs an active scuba diver I feel sort of bad about breathing helium knowing that it's a non-renewable resource. For a single dive in the 50m depth range I'll typically use something like 1000l of He (as measured at standard temperature and pressure). The retail price has gone up by a factor of 3 in the past several years so while it's still somewhat affordable we clearly won't be able to continue doing open-circuit technical diving indefinitely. Some of my friends have switched to closed-circuit rebreathers that use very little helium but those are far more dangerous.
- gaius 12y agoRebreathers are a lot safer these days, esp. units like the Sentinel which have extensive self tests.
- nradov 12y agoThere are still several rebreather failure modes due to user error or equipment failure which can kill the user and won't necessarily be detectable by a self test. So although rebreathers can be made somewhat safer they will never be as safe as open circuit for sport diving. At least with OC gear, if anything goes wrong the problem is hard to miss and the solution is always simple.
- gaius 12y agoOn the Sentinel you can switch to the BOV in a second, unless you're an alpinist :-)
- nradov 12y agoIt's tough to switch if you're already unconscious due to hypoxia. You really can't notice the onset of hypoxia fast enough to fix the problem. In theory that shouldn't happen if the diver sets up the gear correctly and pays attention to the alarms, but in practice sometimes divers make mistakes and end up dead. There was an incident in my area several years ago where a rebreather diver missed a step in his pre-dive checks and jumped off the boat with his oxygen valve off. By the time he swam to the anchor line he had consumed most of the oxygen in the loop (while probably not noticing the alarms), passed out, and drowned. That was user error but the fact remains that if he had been using open circuit gear, a simple error like jumping off the boat with a closed tank valve almost certainly wouldn't have killed him.