
Huge helium discovery 'a life-saving find' - emilong
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-06-28-huge-helium-discovery-life-saving-find
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devishard
On helium rarity: helium can easily be produced by nuclear reaction. That's
expensive, of course. But if we raise the price of helium to prevent depletion
of resources, helium will be expensive too.

Given we have a way to make it, we aren't going to run out of the stuff, so I
just don't think this problem is that dire.

~~~
WildUtah
Helium can be easily retrieved from the atmosphere by fractional distillation.
It leaks up into the atmosphere from the radioactive core of the Earth and
forms naturally from solar radiation in the upper atmosphere, keeping
atmospheric concentration high enough.

We get gasses like Argon and Neon the same way all the time. There is no
helium crisis and there will never be a shortage in the next billion years.

The situation where Helium is much cheaper than Neon may end but there will
always be plenty for industrial and science uses, even if balloons get more
expensive.

~~~
dharma1
What would it cost if extracted from air, considering only five parts per
million are helium? The number I've seen is 10,000 times as much as currently.

Solar radiation producing helium in the upper atmosphere - how would you
extract it from the upper atmosphere? I would have thought it doesn't mix with
lower atmosphere due to atmospheric escape.

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ars
Combine it with CO2 extraction (you'll get CO2 anyway so you might as well do
something good with it) and the money to do it might be there.

~~~
shkkmo
If we let the market price of helium go up (paired with the carbon credits),
could CO2 extraction from the atmosphere become an economically feasible way
of counteracting global warming?

~~~
empraptor
I don't know the answer to that, but just wanted to mention you would want the
market price to include the cost of storing the captured CO2.

EDIT: never mind. if anyone was buying this at market value, it doesn't make
sense for the buyer to store it indefinitely.

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awjr
Given the scarcity of this stuff, we really need to be looking at this in
terms of centuries and maybe tight controls are still a good idea.

~~~
dijit
Nah fam. I need my balloons. /s

But really, how do we deal with a public who feels that they are entitled the
stuff, and companies willing to sell it to them because it's more profitable?

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gutnor
The thing is if this is so rare and so precious, why is it cheap enough to put
in balloon.

Now obviously I get that it is not currently rare, but that once it gets rare
that's going to be a big issue.

But there are people whose job is to prepare for the next 100 years. Those are
governments. Shouldn't they just buy the whole lot of it while it is cheap,
that's good use of public money if you know your country is going to need the
stuff. The newfound scarcity should push the price of helium outside of
regular human entertainment budget.

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organsnyder
In the United States, we've had the National Helium Reserve since the 1960's.
Unfortunately, the decision was made in 1996 to privatize the reserves,
starting in the mid-2000's. That's much of the reason for the scarcity we face
now.

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tragomaskhalos
The year is 2800; An alien spacecraft lands to survey the blasted and ashen
ruin that was once home to over 7 billion sentient beings. The mission
commander, with infinite sadness, reports their findings to his superiors:
"They let the market decide".

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melling
7 billion? We're going to be close to 11 billion by the end of the century.
That's a lot more birthday parties, graduations, etc.

Don't forget the other effect on sea life when they're released near water:

[http://balloonsblow.org/impacts-on-wildlife-and-
environment/](http://balloonsblow.org/impacts-on-wildlife-and-environment/)

~~~
robbiep
I believe the implication is we are less than '5 minutes to midnight'

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tomp
> Now, a research group [...] has developed a brand new exploration approach.
> The first use of this method has resulted in the discovery of a world-class
> helium gas field in Tanzania.

Hm... One try, one hit. Maybe it's not _that_ rare after all?

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aexaey

      Helium [...] is critical to [...] MRI scanner
    

Is that still the case, now that high-temperature superconductors are
available, which work just fine while being cooled with much cheaper liquid
nitrogen instead of requiring liquid helium?

~~~
pja
It’s not as simple as that. Wikipedia says:

 _Some cuprates have an upper critical field of about 100 tesla. However,
cuprate materials are brittle ceramics which are expensive to manufacture and
not easily turned into wires or other useful shapes. Also, high-temperature
superconductors do not form large, continuous superconducting domains, but
only clusters of microdomains within which superconducting occurs. They are
therefore unsuitable for applications requiring actual superconducted
currents, such as magnets for magnetic resonance spectrometers._

IOW, we don’t have a high temperature superconducting material that’s suitable
for use in an MRI scanner yet.

~~~
arijun
It seems there is High temperature superconducting wire entering the market:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_wire#HTS.28Hig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_wire#HTS.28High_Temperature_Superconductor.29_Wire)

~~~
akiselev
That's still just cuprate superconductors except flattened inside of a metal
tube. It's still expensive, inflexible, and for reasons to do with the SC
physics, behave differently than the kind of Type 1 superconductors needed for
MRIs and NMRs (high temperature superconductors are Type 2 and are a
drastically different phenomenon).

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JakeWesorick
If helium is so important and rare why do we put it in balloons?

~~~
chimeracoder
> If helium is so important and rare why do we put it in balloons?

Same reason why we use potable water (an expensive resource) to flush our
toilets - some mixture of laziness, lack of awareness, apathy, and cost.

~~~
mikeash
That's a pretty good analogy. Both cases represent an insignificantly small
usage of their respective resources, gain attention merely because they're
immediately visible in our lives, and act as a distraction from the real
problems. For water, agricultural use vastly outweighs the use from flushing
toilets. For helium, medical and industrial uses far outweigh what goes into
balloons.

~~~
zymhan
I think your analogy is better than GPs, as you actually framed the issue in
terms of proportional consumption.

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perilunar
What is wrong with people — why would you ever use BCf instead of kg? Same
with barrels (oil) and kWh per day (power? energy? I get confused with all the
different time units in there).

Use SI units FFS.

~~~
microcolonel
Measuring Helium by mass might produce numbers which seem underwhelming to a
common audience.

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executesorder66
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_United_States)

I found those interesting reads as well. I did not know the US had the largest
supply of Helium.

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Animats
The "huge helium discovery" needs to get more real first. The startup Helium
One has not yet drilled a well.[1] They're prospectors only at this point. You
can read similar gold mining prospector reports if you're into that sort of
thing.

[1] [http://www.helium-one.com/projects/](http://www.helium-one.com/projects/)

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nradov
I guess we'll be able to continue using helium mixes for open circuit scuba
diving for a few more years. Hopefully that will allow sufficient time for
rebreathers to become cheaper, simpler, and more reliable. I do feel bad about
wasting a limited resource every time I go diving.

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mark-r
I wonder how accurate the estimate is for the size of the find? They say it
was "independently verified", but if they were paying the bill for that
verification they might have simply gotten what they wanted to hear.

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desireco42
It just should be more expensive, that is all. That is at least my
understanding of the problem.

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dlio
What is it about the MRI/superconducting applications that precludes
recapture?

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randyrand
What percentage of helium goes into the residential balloon market?

Just curious.

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AKifer
start a race and the next big thing will be a Helium bubble

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mmaunder
The rift valley where this was found cuts straight through the Serengeti, one
of the largest and most awesome national parks in the world. I hope this
doesn't tear that area up.

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rnnr
We run out of things we could possibly run out of!!!

