
Global helium shortage in prospect as US reservoir in line to close next month - ljf
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/19/helium-shortage-us-reservoir-texas
======
Lagged2Death
Been a looming problem for years:

[http://www.metafilter.com/94959/We-Are-Running-Out-Of-
Helium...](http://www.metafilter.com/94959/We-Are-Running-Out-Of-Helium-and-
Its-Worse-Than-You-Think)

The Helium Privatisation Act required the reserve to sell enough helium to pay
off its debts by a given deadline, then close. The resulting glut has kept the
price low.

[http://phys.org/news201853523.html](http://phys.org/news201853523.html)

I don't know why they didn't instead just sell the reserve in its entirety for
the amount of the debt, or for more. If the goal was to get the government out
of the helium business (a dubious aim, if it's really as strategic an asset as
all that) that would have done the job immediately and eliminated years of
market distortion. But I guess any upheaval that resulted would be easily tied
to the government officials who were around at the time.

 _Helium is a byproduct of natural gas production ... Demand for helium has
risen, driven particularly by Asia 's booming manufacturing industry._

A cynic might wonder if a closing date known 19 years in advance was designed
partly to ensure that American petrochemical industry had time to develop the
infrastructure required to take maximum advantage of any price shock.

~~~
namlem
While there may be corruption afoot, part of the reason they couldn't move the
entire supply at once is because it's so hard to store. Helium can seep
through a steel tank without difficulty. The US government keeps its helium in
an old mine dug out of very dense rock. Apparently it is one of few facilities
capable of long term helium storage.

~~~
eru
Why not sell the whole hole?

------
jimmcslim
If this is true, why we continue to allow helium to be used for something as
frivolous as party balloons baffles me. Clearly the true market price of
helium is not being charged? Or is the reality of 'peak helium', and the
availability of new sources, harder to understand? (e.g. here in Australia we
have significant natural/coal seam gas resources, presumably an 'abundant'
source of helium?)

Also, if helium is the most abundant element in the universe, is there a
practical, economical way to harvest this from space; I'm envisioning some
sort of solar-sail powered scoop sucking up helium for return to earth in a
heat-shielded flask parachuted into the oceans.

~~~
fluidcruft
From what I've heard, party balloons often use nitrogen nowadays. Helium has
become too expensive and the consumer won't notice the difference until a few
days after the sale (if at all).

~~~
ginko
Pure nitrogen basically has the same density as air (Composing 80% of it). So
a party balloon filled with nitrogen wouldn't float.

~~~
fluidcruft
I'm pretty sure that's what happened. Party City had a whole sign apologizing
for the switch to nitrogen about the same time we were having trouble getting
dewars to refill our scanner and I talked to the owner about it so I don't
think it was confusing the floating balloons with the other balloons.

But you're right it makes little sense in terms of buoyancy and that hadn't
occurred to me at the time. Maybe it was actually a switch to a
helium/nitrogen blend.

I can also see replacing helium completely for those balloons that get tied
into shapes (animals etc), but that's a tiny sliver of the balloon market I'd
assume.

------
aaron695
To be honest a secret part of me hopes it'll happen so airship technologies
will be forced to use hydrogen rather than helium.

I've always considered the false safety issues with hydrogen and the fact you
can instead use, safer but expensive helium have held it back.

No facts of figures to support my reasoning though.

~~~
bartonfink
False safety issues with hydrogen? That's a pretty extraordinary claim in the
light of ample chemical and historical evidence of the dangers of hydrogen
gas.

~~~
aaron695
As compared to petrol dangers?

Something lay people (And children in many states) handle all the time and sit
on top a huge tank of every time they go driving.

Just saying hydrogen dangers are way over rated and it's hurt progress, and
part of that is because there is a safer replacement, even though it's very
expensive.

~~~
bartonfink
The dangers of petrol are a total non sequitur in this case, and have no
bearing whatsoever on the well-documented and well understood dangers of
hydrogen gas. Cholesterol is likewise highly dangerous, but saying "far more
people die of heart disease than hydrogen gas accidents" has very little
import in a discussion on airships and helium.

There are good reasons we don't use hydrogen anymore in airships and use
helium instead. There are other good reasons not to use helium, but those
reasons don't trump the dangers of hydrogen, unless you knew of specific
development which would mitigate the dangers that pressurized hydrogen gas
presents, which I'm guessing you do not.

------
xradionut
Considering the state of the US government, it's either incompetence or fraud.
I wouldn't be surprised if Goldman Sachs had warehouses full of dewars of
helium...

------
jevinskie
> A $1.4bn (£900m) debt is due to finish being repaid to the US treasury by
> the end of this month and under current law, federal funding will then stop,
> terminating operations.

It sounds like the facility in Texas would shut down due to lack of funding,
not a lack of material? If that is the case, the helium at the facility
doesn't magically disappear overnight. Though it may slowly leak...

------
beedogs
I still can't figure out why it was all sold off in the first place. It seems
like an incredibly shortsighted decision.

~~~
sliverstorm
The reserve was running a big cash deficit.

Of course, it seems to me like the _right_ action would be to try to increase
the market price. It is clearly more valuable than its current price, and the
US reserve was providing more than half the world's helium for a while.

------
rch
I don't think the reporting on this is properly emphasizing the fact that
there is actually an impending helium shortage. What I've read so far makes it
seem like a bureaucratic error of some kind.

------
georgemcbay
FTA: "the spot price of liquid helium had jumped to $25-30 a litre from $8
last year."

Still way cheaper than printer ink, at over $5,000 per litre!

------
hawkharris
It's a shame that Americans of the future will miss out on the childhood
pastime of making your voice sound really, really funny.

~~~
westicle
Maybe they'll just have to switch to Sulfur Hexafluoride.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-XbjFn3aqE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-XbjFn3aqE)

------
fixxer
Energy dependent. Helium dependent. We might have to export more democracy to
make up this deficit.

~~~
eru
Thanks to shale oil and shale gas, there's not much left of US outside energy
dependency.

~~~
fixxer
We still import 36%. Not saying that isn't impressive...

[http://science.time.com/2013/09/05/americas-oil-boom-wont-
ma...](http://science.time.com/2013/09/05/americas-oil-boom-wont-make-it-
energy-independent-from-mideast-madness/)

------
rocky1138
I wonder if they can harvest Helium from spent nuclear fuel in any great
quantity to combat this.

~~~
BWStearns
The article says it results also in the production of natural gas. A more
efficient (due to ubiquity) solution seems to be ensuring its capture at gas
production sites.

~~~
fluidcruft
MR folklore that I've never bothered to corroborate says:

We like helium because it doesn't react with anything. That also means we
can't easily extract it from anything--you have to extract everything else
until only helium remains. This is a ridiculously expensive process.

The large underground domes that trapped natural gas in Texas also trapped the
helium that resulted from millennia of radioactive decay within the Earth.
Getting helium from that sort of a deposit is comparatively inexpensive.

In the early 20st century, we believed helium airships were going to become
important military weapons, and we started to stock pile helium as a strategic
reserve--Texas natural gas producers were mandated to extract the helium and
give it to the government for storage and eventual military use rather than
vent it into the atmosphere.

Later we got airplanes, and airships became a thing of the past like dodos.
And since we had a large store of helium, it was available for research and
science and balloons. Cool things developed. For MR this meant high-fields
generated by superconducting magnets.

But of course maintaining a large stockpile of helium is also expensive. And
what does the public know about helium? Why are we wasting our money on
balloons and funny voices and besides if scientists say it's important, then
it must be the devil's plaything.

So along came the Gingrich-era House and the Contract with America. Congress
stopped the economically-crushing over-bearing regulatory burden of helium
trapping that was crushing Texas's natural gas competitiveness.

Congress also decided to simultaneously make a few bucks by selling of the
helium reserve at cut rate prices, killing any chance of economic incentives
developing a secondary market for helium. You can't simultaneously cut funding
for science and jack up the prices of helium, that would be one straw too far!
Thus the large US reserve was to be sold off at very low prices.

Texas natural gas producers thereby had little incentive to catch the helium
themselves as they plowed through the easy natural gas supply, so it was
vented. And the Texas dome natural gas was extremely easy to mine, so
production skyrocketed after being freed from the shackles of government
regulations.

Now that we've moved through the domed natural gas, we're going after the
harder to reach natural gas via fracking.

~~~
ijk
> In the early 21st century Pedantic, but I assume you meant "early 20th
> century."

~~~
fluidcruft
Thanks, fixed.

------
marco_salvatori
So What? The US is a supplier of helium. The US may get out of the market.
Prices will rise until other suppliers expand output. Overall, in the long
term, the helium market will work fine just like the other markets we dont
need the US government to supply.

~~~
sliverstorm
Firstly, helium don't grow on trees. There's a limited supply on Earth.

Secondly, allowing the market price of helium to shoot up for foolish
bureaucratic reasons is short-sighted, selfish, and doesn't really do anyone
any good.

