
The Increasing Scarcity of Helium - davidbarker
http://www.priceonomics.com/the-increasing-scarcity-of-helium/
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WildUtah
You can extract argon from air to do most of what helium is used for. It's
completely inert and liquefies at 87K. Pure argon gas costs $5 a kilo. Liquid
nitrogen and carbon dioxide will cover most of the rest of the applications
and are much cheaper.

Neon from air is much more expensive at $300 a kilo. That's because Neon is at
a low concentration similar to helium. Helium can be extracted for about the
same price as neon, so we're not in danger of ever running out. Helium is a
renewable resource that leaks out of the Earth's crust and regenerates from
solar wind constantly, contrary to op.

It's only extremely cheap helium that will run out, and most of the supplies
in the world are still underground in natural gas reserves. There are
generations of cheap helium left.

~~~
InclinedPlane
No, it's not just that you "can" extract argon from the air, it's that we _do_
, a lot. It's widely industrially available. If Argon were a suitable
replacement for Helium it would be used instead due to its vastly lower cost,
wider availability, and easier handling.

From this we can conclude that Argon is not a suitable replacement for the
current uses of Helium. People pay a premium to use Helium today, and that
speaks to the fact that Helium has unique properties that are highly
advantageous.

~~~
WildUtah
He costs $3 per m^3 on the open market. Argon costs about $8 per m^3. N2 is
cheaper.

There are some uses for He that are harder to replace. Argon will collect in
low spaces more than He; N2 might be a compromise for welding. Nothing can be
relied on to be quite as cold as liquid He. But there is a lot of substitution
that can be done when He prices rise, several generations from now.

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anigbrowl
_in 1996 Congress passed the Helium Privatization Act. The Act ordered the
Reserve to sell off its stockpile, starting in 2005,_ at a formula-driven
price -- not auctioned off at market rate, _and to cease sales and shut down
operations by 2015._

I'm a bit disappointed that Pricenomics didn't do some follow-up work to
determine who sponsored this legislation, who that legislator's main political
donors were, and which industrial concerns benefited the most from this
implicit subsidy.

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ChuckMcM
I have always found it interesting that helium _leaves the planet_ when it
escapes into the atmosphere. Something cool about letting some out of a
balloon on the ground and knowing you have just launched something into space,
to rise up and then get picked up by the solar wind and sent flying.

Romantic notions aside though, it is pretty common in space being the by
product of the star's initial gas load. At some point I wonder if collecting
it there will be economical.

~~~
kordless
The moon is chock full of it. Would be hysterical if we went back to the moon
just because kid's balloons.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Nah, one MRI magnet uses more helium than 10,000 kids balloons, and you get to
charge $5,000 every time you use it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Uses or wastes? I.e. is 10k-balloon-equivalent helium released or reused?

~~~
Kliment
Reused unless you do a quench (emergency shutdown)

~~~
jackgavigan
This comment led me to:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOUJP5dFEg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOUJP5dFEg)

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zaroth
But is it real? I have a feeling "Peak Oil" and "Peak Helium" are not too far
apart. Both were false projections based on poor understanding of market
dynamics, technological advances, and proven and economically reachable
reserves.

The article itself says the dumping of the last several years effectively
destroyed the production infrastructure. As the price stabilizes reinvestment
will follow, and doesn't it stand to reason that more reserves will be found
and existing outlets more fully tapped such that 100 years reserve becomes 200
years and so on?

Sounds also a bit like the outcry over "rare earths" which after China
threatened to shut off the spigot all of a sudden a dozen other facilities got
in line to happily take their place. The market is lazy, up until the moment
there's a buck to be made.

~~~
quadrangle
I'm completely unconvinced that peak oil is a false idea. We're down to
extracting fossil fuels our of sand and rocks, this is crazy. We obviously
passed peak in terms of the liquid crude that bubbles out of the ground.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Why is it crazy? We extract our iron, copper, gold, and silver from sand and
rocks. Is that crazy too?

~~~
anigbrowl
Because it's so inefficient relative to just pumping it out of oilfields, that
it only makes sense when the price is quite high (hence the huge production
pullback in response to recent price drops). Now I don't think we can just
move off fossil fuels tomorrow, but we're clearly into an era of diminishing
returns.

~~~
lotu
Extracting gold from rock is inefficient compared to panning for it in a
river. That doesn't mean we are running out of gold.

~~~
anigbrowl
IT doesn't but it does mean the days of anybody being able to prospect for
gold are long gone. you'll always be able to get more of almost any physical
resource, but the notion of Peak ____ is economic rather than purely physical.

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nradov
As an active scuba diver I feel sort of guilty about wasting a non-renewable
resource by breathing helium through open-circuit equipment on deep dives. And
the USA retail price that divers pay for helium has roughly tripled in the
past 15 years. Fairly soon I'm afraid we're going to have to either quit
diving deeper than 30m, or switch to more complex, expensive, and dangerous
closed-circuit rebreathers.

~~~
nsajko
Well, you should probably put more blame on the corrupt lawmakers who decided
to give away Helium reserves _beneath_ market price.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Progress is being made:

"2013 saw the passage of the Helium Stewardship Act, which allowed the
National Helium Reserve to continue operations until 2021, and to sell its
helium at auction -- creating prices closer to market rate. But not before
selling off a large chunk of the Reserve for peanuts."

We have a strategic petroleum reserve that most Congress and America would go
berserk over if we attempted to close, but helium, something far more
valuable, is filling our party favors.

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WalterBright
I've refused to buy helium party balloons for decades now because of this.

~~~
markdown
How old are you, and when did you first hear about the scarcity of helium?

~~~
artmageddon
I'm not sure what you're implying by asking, but I'm 33 and I remember hearing
about this probably about 10 years ago.

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theophrastus
"China also plans on mining helium-3, which is currently mostly manufactured,
off the moon." add this to the list of why getting our butts into space
remains a vital goal (someone is keeping this list, yes?)

~~~
nikanj
I think this was a central plot element in Iron Sky

~~~
Animats
Right. He3 fusion is harder to do than DT-DT fusion, which we can't yet make
work for power production anyway. DT-DT fusion produces somewhat more
radioactive waste products, but less than fission.

It's possible, after all, to make He3 by making tritium and waiting 12 years.

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Animats
The price of helium in bulk went way up two years ago. Airship Ventures,
Silicon Valley's tourist Zeppelin NT, had to shut down and sell their ship.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
According to wikipedia, they closed up due to lack of a long term sponsor. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Ventures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Ventures)

~~~
Animats
It's more like the helium shortage made the existing operation unprofitable,
and they needed to increase revenue to stay in operation. Also, during the
recession, $400 sightseeing trips didn't sell well.

Airships leak helium. A lot. You can't just inflate the thing once; it needs
constant refilling. I met the CEO once at a steampunk convention, before the
shutdown. The price of helium was starting to hurt, but hadn't killed them
yet. Their two biggest expenses were labor and helium. Fuel cost was
relatively small.

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p1mrx
There's tons of it right there on the sun. Just vacuum it up, and problem
solved.

~~~
juhq
Yeah. Best to do it at night!

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zamalek
Should be lesser of a problem once we get further along with fusion.

~~~
logicallee
okay, how do you figure?

EDIT: I thought you meant there was some wasteful high-energy way to get it
from something, the way you can do electrolysis on water (to get oxygen and
hydrogen, though this isn't used due to it being easier to just get hydrogen
from fossil fuels.) I didn't think you meant we should literally fuse hydrogen
to meet our helium needs!

~~~
zamalek
H + H = He, trivial

~~~
zzalpha
IIRC, the volume of production wouldn't nearly meet the current market demand.

~~~
zamalek
"Lesser" is a relative term. My hope is that we replace hydrocarbons quite
thoroughly with fusion if/when the tech becomes viable; which probably won't
solve the problem but will certainly help.

We'll basically have the same situation as we have with plutonium once the
terrestrial/natural resources die out - which is bad but not nearly as
impossible as simply not having access to the element.

~~~
zzalpha
I'm not sure what your point is.

Even if we replaced all energy generation with fusion. And I mean all of it.
As far as I'm aware, the amount of waste helium produced wouldn't meet our
needs.

Maybe you don't realize just _how much_ industrial helium is used... but it's
a lot. According to:

[http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/helium/mcs-...](http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/helium/mcs-2014-heliu.pdf)

As of 2013, some 47 million cubic meters, or 1.8 billion cubic feet, to be
exact.

Every MRI uses Helium, as do many other systems, for cryogenics. It's also
used in applications where an inert environment is required, which includes
arc welding applications (think all those aluminum trucks rolling off assembly
lines).

~~~
zamalek
Again, "lesser" is relative.

"Some" is more than "none" by a significant margin. A _single_ functioning MRI
is significantly more than _no_ functioning MRIs.

> I'm aware, the amount of waste helium produced wouldn't meet our needs.

Yes, the energy produced by nuclear power is huge - which means you don't need
to convert much mass and hence you don't wind up with much He.

 _Something_ is infinitely better than _nothing._ Again, take Pu as an example
of that - we have very little of the stuff but we are careful with it because
of the scarcity (something that we are not with He); if we were forced to we
could probably stretch a limited He supply a bit further, just like we do with
Pu (e.g. not using it for bloody balloons). He is a great cryogenic for MRIs
but possibly it's not the only feasible solution to that specific problem: it
might be possible to replace it with a more common element.

~~~
zzalpha
> Something is infinitely better than nothing.

Eh, honestly, that's a largely meaningless statement.

Let's say we went from 40 million cubic meters of helium a day to 1.

That would effectively eliminate the _vast_ majority of industrial helium
applications due to cost.

So no, "something" isn't better than "nothing" if you go from "abundant" to
"very scarce".

And yes, there are absolutely applications (such as welding) where there are
alternatives available (argon and xenon, particularly). But that isn't solving
the helium shortage problem. It's coping with it. Which we should be doing.
But we can't expect fusion to help us along... it's not an answer, here.

~~~
jfoutz
I think zamalek is making a point about marginal value - kinda. The vast
majority of helium users are screwed. they've just got to figure out something
else. But some users, say MRI machine makers, really need it. And people want
MRIs. So, they'll mark up the cost of their machines by a million dollars (or
whatever). Really, if there's demand at thousands of dollars per cubic meter,
we'll find a way.

my guess is harvesting from the moon, rather than fusion. We might also just
say fuck it, reserve the last million cubic feet for science experiments and
call it a day.

I think your point is, there are tons of industrial uses of helium right now,
and if it were to be gone today, it would be a huge problem.

imho, we should probably tax the hell out of its usage right now to force
people find alternatives and be more efficient.

The price change is coming even if we don't want it to. it can be gradual or a
hockey stick. We both agree cutting the supply by 7 or 8 orders of magnitude
one afternoon would really suck.

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WalterBright
Should revisit using hydrogen as a lifting gas. Yes, I know, "Hindenburg", but
we've learned how to fly safely in airplanes full of fuel.

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arikrak
> At the current consumption rates, Richardson estimated we would deplete the
> world’s helium reserves within 100 years.

Only 100 years, how scary. I think by then we'll find new ways to get helium,
find alternatives or recycle it. A lot happens in 100 years.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
And this, basically, is how we get all sorts of environmental/resource
collapse. "Bah, I'll be dead before it gets bad, so who cares? I'm sure my
grandkids will come up with something, probably. They'll be fine."

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comrade1
There's plenty of helium in natural gas, but it isn't being separated because
the current price of helium is artificially low because of government
manipulation (subsidies probably isn't the right way to describe it)

