

Good bye, Helium... - ilkhd2
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/going_going_gone/

======
raganwald
Helium is also critical for scuba diving in the 200' to 1,000' depths.
Currently, the most affordable, safest, and most common way to conduct these
dives is with open-circuit systems, where every breath is taken from the tank
and exhausted into the sea where it bubbles away.

A common mix is 21/35 (21% Oxygen, 35% Helium, the remainder almost entirely
Nitrogen). Divers often use such mixes for dives in the 165 foot range. At
that depth, a fit diver consumes a little over three cubic feet of gas per
minute, which means that a little over one cubic foot of Helium is lost
forever into the atmosphere each minute per diver.

An alternative is a closed-circuit or rebreather system, where the exhaust gas
is scrubbed of carbon dioxide and fresh oxygen added to replace the oxygen
metabolized by the diver. Such systems are far more complicated, more
expensive, and require much more training to dive safely.

But one of the advantages of closed-circuit diving is that the inert gases
(including Helium) are not exhausted with every breath. Therefore, it doesn't
matter how many minutes a dive takes, Helium is not being exhausted into the
water with every breath. This makes for a substantial savings in cost per dive
and saves a non-renewable resource.

As Helium prices rise, I hop there will be an economic incentive for divers to
take up closed-circuit diving, which will in turn lead to the development of
simpler, cheaper and safer systems.

~~~
nradov
Helium prices are already high outside the US, yet no one has produced a
closed-circuit system with acceptable safety. No matter what kind of controls
and alarms they build in it's too easy to end up without enough oxygen in the
loop. A friend of a friend died here in the northeast Pacific not long ago
because he just forgot to turn on the valve, and didn't realize what happened
before he passed out.

In the long run I expect we'll end up with more semi-closed systems. They're a
little less efficient but inherently safer. Something like this
<http://www.halcyon.net/?q=node/44> could probably be mass produced at a
reasonable price (expensive now due to custom manufacturing).

------
JunkDNA
I have been reading about the pending helium shortage for the last 10 years
(for example: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html>). That
WIRED article gave us 10 - 25 years. The Seed article gives us 10 - 15 from
today.

I never know what to think of these things, given that we have been "running
out of oil" since the late 1970's. I suspect, just as with oil, that there is
no economic incentive for anyone to go looking for new supply while the price
is so low. Once it gets high enough, someone is going to figure out some crazy
way to extract it.

~~~
cwan
FWIW we've been running out of oil for even longer than that: "In 1919 United
States Geological Survey (USGS) head George Otis Smith even predicted that the
nation would be out of oil in nine years."
[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0520_040520_...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0520_040520_oil.html)

~~~
jamesbritt
Wow. I can see the party banners:

"Peak Oil: Celebrating 100 Years!"

------
kurtosis
With regards to cryogenic applications:

Right now a 500 L dewar of liquid He costs about $500 USD. (more for some
locations in EU) You can already buy regenerators that capture the boiled off
LHe and this can save a good amount of money with some suppliers. If Helium
becomes more scarce this type of technology will become much more common.

A larger concern is the scarcity of He3 - This has become very expensive in
Europe due to the US's crazy ambition to install thousands of He3 based
detectors for people smuggling nuclear bombs into the USA. See
[http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2549/he-3-and-homeland-
securi...](http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2549/he-3-and-homeland-security-
part-1) for more info. Like other posters I don't understand why the Russians
don't step up!

~~~
electromagnetic
I fail to see the argument here, Neon is readily within peoples price range
and is almost exclusively provided by cryogenic fractal distillation. It costs
approximately $33/100g and helium presently costs $5.2/100g. Considering the
existing neon producers will only have to modify their equipment slightly I
doubt the price of helium would ever surpass the price of neon in the
foreseeable future.

~~~
cperciva
At 1 atmosphere, Neon freezes at 24.5K. This makes it rather ineffective as a
coolant.

~~~
electromagnetic
And the relevance of this to using fractal distillation to harvest helium from
the atmosphere is?

~~~
cperciva
I misunderstood your point -- I thought you were suggesting that Neon could be
used as a replacement for Helium.

------
RK
I found a big tank of helium in the pile of junk at the house I moved into
about a year ago and ended up giving it away since I had no use for it (after
making a ton of party balloons).

I guess I should have kept the tank and retired after purchasing a private
island in the Caribbean...

------
samueladam
Pay attention to the way they display tags on the left, very clever.

~~~
ableal
The display may be clever, if a bit long, but clicking on a tag just seems to
take one to a list of articles for that single tag.

I was half-expecting the turn-filter-on (or off) available in some of the
neater e-commerce sites ...

------
helium
I for one, am very sad about this :)

------
cjoh
Uhhh, so how do I invest in Helium?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Party supply centers, man. Start hoarding balloons.

------
rms
If exponential progress of technology keeps up, 12 years until we are getting
helium from the moon?

~~~
lutorm
The moon has helium? It sounds like it comes from alpha-decay of radioactive
elements and I don't think the moon has much of that given its size, no iron
core and all. But I'm not a planetary scientist...

~~~
streety
I recall that one of the reasons frequently given for returning to the moon is
that it is "rich" in Helium-3 (the commonest isotope is Helium-4) and it can
be used in nuclear fusion[1].

If wikipedia is to be believed "rich" is relative here and corresponds to 0.01
ppm. He-4 is slightly better at 28 ppm. However as He-4 is 5ppm [2] of the
atmosphere here on Earth the Moon seems a long way to go to achieve just a
6-fold enrichment.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3> [2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition>

~~~
IgorPartola
Helium-3 is also extremely useful when it comes to cryogenics. Since it is 25%
lighter than Helium-4, it is easier to boil it off to reach temperatures below
1 degree K. In the systems that use Helium-3 it's usually a closed circuit
system and loss of helium is considered to be a big deal since it's expensive.

------
lutorm
Wow, that's one element I didn't consider scarce, but it makes sense.

~~~
ubernostrum
Except it's not, really.

Right now we get helium by distilling it out of natural gas, which means that
we only tap a tiny fraction of what's actually present on and in the planet.
And although right now we're using helium faster than we can extract it from
the dwindling supply of natural gas, that doesn't preclude the development of
other methods and sources in the future (and, once the supply is low enough
and the demand is high enough, somebody will put up the money to figure it
out).

~~~
randrews
"dwindling supply of natural gas"?

I work for a company that makes it more efficient and safer to throw away
natural gas. It's nowhere near as rare as you think, in fact, in drilling,
it's considered a nuisance more than a product of the well. It's like saying
we have a dwindling supply of mud.

At one point, oil companies actually gave it away for free.

~~~
pavel_lishin
So why are suckers paying $500 for 500L of it?

------
mhb
I'm relieved that the US will at least have something to trade to China for
the rare earth metals which are also running out.

~~~
nradov
The US also has a latent supply of rare earth metals.
<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN28385099>

------
anonjon
Tritium is produced by fission reactors, tritium decays into an isotope of
helium.

So i think this is different from oil where oil can't really be produced.

I'm not saying we should crap all of our helium away, but I'm having a hard
time being concerned about something that we can at least hypothetically
produce.

Also, more on deep earth nuclear reactors:
<http://www.pnas.org/content/98/20/11085.full>

~~~
ultimatt42
Who says oil can't be produced? I mean, it doesn't make sense to use it as a
fuel source since you'd have to put in at least as much energy as you'd be
getting back out, but you can still produce it.

------
hackermom
Reading about Helium on Wikipedia, I get the impression that it's far from as
rare - neither in natural occurance nor in natural or artificial production -
as this article would like to suggest.

"In the Earth's heterosphere, a part of the upper atmosphere, helium and other
lighter gases are the most abundant elements."

"In this way an estimated 3000 metric tons of helium are generated per year
throughout the lithosphere."

And as both Wiki and the article points out, the biggest "reserve" is found in
natural gas - which Europe, with Russia in particular, has vast abundances of.
Not sure with what concentration our European gas deposits hold Helium,
though.

I'm not sure which source to trust here on the topic of Helium being this
rare.

~~~
astine
With regard to atmospheric helium, I don't believe that we know how to harvest
that yet. So, it's out of our reach, at least for now.

~~~
jcl
I suppose if we had a space elevator, we could just run a pipeline alongside
it. :)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Or send up a guy with a bucket.

