
We may not be running out of helium after all (2015) - welder
https://newatlas.com/helium-source-natural-gas-fields/39038/
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yummypaint
We are still running out. All this claims is that we may have a little more in
reserve than previously thought. Helium still floats up into space
unrecoverably when released. The article contains this information, but the
headline is wrong.

~~~
Accujack
No, we've never been running out. The government liquidating the strategic
reserve distorted the price, but it will adjust.

Helium is produced from natural gas wells but with the prices for the gas
where they have been for so long no one bothers to capture it - it's not worth
it, it's just vented to the atmosphere and escapes.

So "running out of helium" basically means "running out of cheap helium and
the price will go up until it establishes a balance with the cost of producing
it from the ground instead of a government storage tank".

For as long as we get natural gas out of the ground, we will have helium.

~~~
abacadaba
So what ~50 years?

I often wonder what it will be like for the next intelligent
species/civilization that develops on earth. With all the easily accessible
resources already mined will get get stuck in the steampunk age? Sure there
might still some left where we could find it with advanced equipment, but not
if you're just starting out.

Do planets essentially get one shot at advanced civilization?

~~~
gambiting
I think it's the exact opposite though - if we suddenly died out then whatever
comes after us will have much easier, not harder time. We've already extracted
so many natural resources that there is an abundance of them on the surface.
You could build an entire civilization just using our leftovers, no need to
dig iron out, just melt the hundreds of millions of automobile husks that will
be everywhere. And there's still trillions of barrels of oil left in the
ground, as well as loads of coal left.

~~~
mschuster91
> You could build an entire civilization just using our leftovers, no need to
> dig iron out, just melt the hundreds of millions of automobile husks that
> will be everywhere.

Not sure if this is practical. In contrast to ore which is basically rock and
more-or-less pure iron (or other desired metal), automobiles are a wild mix of
different alloys which would have to be extensively processed (if this is
possible in the first place). With plastics, the situation is similar if not
worse, given that not all plastics melt, and burned fuel is burned and cannot
be recovered at all.

The only thing where our civilizational waste can be used is if someone
invents a Star Trek replicator clone.

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war1025
A thing I learned several years ago that makes a lot of these "running out"
articles less troublesome is that having "X years" of reserves for a compound
really means "The places we have bothered to look are sufficient to fill
demand for X years."

When the reserves start getting low, you go look in some other likely place,
and lo and behold, Y more years of reserves!

~~~
Matticus_Rex
More precisely, the peak [insert resource] arguments boil down to "at the
current price and level of technology, there is X amount of this resource
left." Of course, as the supply diminishes, the price goes up, and it becomes
cost-effective to harvest that resource from more expensive places and with
more expensive means, AND the incentive to improve the technology for
extraction/identification or invent new technology for new types of extraction
is increased.

~~~
rflrob
But it is inarguable that there is a finite and ever decreasing amount of
{helium,petroleum} in the earth. While we may not now be at peak [insert
resource], and may not be in your lifetime or mine, such a point must exist
and I would bet that the children of today’s newborns will be alive to grapple
with the consequences of it.

~~~
BurningFrog
The Earth is finite, as is the time until the Sun will swallow it, so "it's
finite" it true about literally every resource.

It seems more a way to fuel depressions than a useful way to analyze anything.

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simulate
It's ironic that Earth is running out of the second most abundant element in
the universe.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements)

~~~
moneytide
Isn't helium expected to be a byproduct of commercial fusion?

~~~
seiferteric
Commercial fusion does not exist, and the amounts of helium would be
irrelevant.

~~~
moneytide
Indeed it doesn't, hence "expected".

The concept of extracting helium as a byproduct of a reaction with high energy
output is akin to taking the lye from wood ash and processing it further as an
electrolyte (potassium hydroxide) for NiFe batteries.

I suppose even the irrelevant amounts of helium resulting from this process
would also be ruled out when seeking out new sources since fusion is still in
the experimental phase. Bottleneck seems to be materials
(superconducting/temperature?)

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anoncareer0212
This is from four years ago – anyone have a substantive update?

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jay_kyburz
Still seems a waste to pump it into party balloons. What are going to do in a
few hundred years time when we use these new reserves. Seems a little selfish
to just let them worry about it when the time comes.

~~~
jeffdavis
We need a sense of scale to call something a "waste". How do the resources
used to make a party balloon compare to the resources for some other equally-
fun thing?

~~~
gbrown
An equally fun thing would be filling them with hydrogen, which is really not
_that_ dangerous.

~~~
corey_moncure
Actually hydrogen would be way more than "equally" fun at birthday parties,
which typically feature candles...

~~~
lovemenot
Especially hilarious when someone tries and fails with the squeeky voice
trick.

~~~
basilgohar
Squeaky voice still works with Hydrogen gas, similar to Helium.

~~~
krylon
Yes, but if you happen to speak into the general direction of a burning
candle, things can get very exciting.

~~~
DonHopkins
Oh the humanity!

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sunkenvicar
Scott Adams’ law of slow-moving disasters continues to predict the future.

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theandrewbailey
How was helium extracted to build those reserves in the first place?
(Fractional distillation of liquid natural gas?) Is that simply not viable or
cost effective anymore?

~~~
pkaye
I believe a lot of the US government stockpile of helium was from nuclear
reaction byproducts.

~~~
corprew
it's removed from "natural gas" when they make LNG. the amount generated by
nuclear reaction byproducts is trivial by comparison. See
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022311570...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022311570901923)

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nmstoker
If this is correct then it's good news for those balloon based internet
projects which always stuck me as short sighted in light of the view at the
time that helium was running out

~~~
mwilliaams
That’s no problem, those balloons could always just use hydrogen!

~~~
i_am_nomad
Maybe you’re joking, but really, why not? They’re unmanned, and so a
catastrophic failure is much less of a concern. If helium scarcity is a
serious enough problem, then by all means, full those blooms with H2 and
launch them from a safe zone.

~~~
FlyMoreRockets
The problem with hydrogen is that it is a much smaller molecule than helium
and leaks from light, thin-walled containers like balloons. Heck, it can even
leak along grain boundaries in metal containers.

~~~
stickfigure
Helium leaks too, just at a slower rate. Hydrogen is cheaper to top up.

~~~
jfk13
If you're trying to keep a massive network of balloons aloft to provide wide-
area internet connectivity, the logistics involved in topping up the gas mean
that the frequency of top-ups required may be a greater concern than the cost
of the gas involved.

~~~
NikkiA
Chemical (non-electrolysis) hydrogen generators are a thing, although not
directly useful for larger scale needs like the fuel cell hype, they are
adequate for topping up balloons.

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Razengan
"We" will run out of everything, eventually, as long as we live on only one
planet.

~~~
cookingrobot
Not at all. Most stuff stays on the planet after we use it. Oil turns to
plastic which gets put in a landfill. If you ever want that carbon back you
can just go get it. Used helium floats up to the top of the atmosphere and
blows away into space never to return. At the current rate of use we’ll run
out of helium in the next few generations, and then that’s it. After that if
you need helium you’ll have to get it from another planet.

~~~
jdnenej
How did the helium get here to begin with?

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facesonflags
very uplifting news

~~~
LeonB
Levity not appreciated.

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Taniwha
Woo! Hoo! let the helium rush begin

(spoken in a high squeaky voice)

~~~
Taniwha
Seriously though what they seem to be saying is that there's somewhere up in
the Rockies where you might be able to dig a helium well

