
Are we really running out of helium? - caffeinewriter
http://www.quora.com/Are-we-really-running-out-of-helium?share=1
======
ghshephard
Stealing my own comment from HN on this:

That article reads a lot like "Peak Oil" concerns. There is a lot of Helium
available - [1] The global reserves of helium are known to be approximately 41
billion cubic meters. Most of them lie in Qatar, Algeria, the USA and Russia.
Annual global production of helium is about 175 million cubic meters, and the
USA remains the largest producer. "

Regardless, this is something the market can correct for very, very easily. As
helium supply becomes more scarce, the price will go up, resulting in greater
supply. Most of it comes from natural gas, and is so cheap [2] it's not worth
capturing. Oil trades for around $100/barrel. Helium trades at $100 for a
thousand cubic feet (albeit in gas form)

Some of the problems with Helium is that Physics experiments use a LOT, and
previously was so cheap that it wasn't worth trying to conserve. That's
changing - [3] A recycling system can recapture about $12,000/year of lost
helium for a single scientist.

From reading articles - apparently the problems isn't so much that the cost of
helium is increasing - but that it's been so cheap because of the US Natural
Reserves making it completely non-competitive to capture - they are basically
giving the stuff away for next to nothing.

[1]
[http://www.gazprominfo.com/articles/helium/](http://www.gazprominfo.com/articles/helium/)

[2] [http://finance.yahoo.com/news/airgas-increase-prices-
helium-...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/airgas-increase-prices-
helium-20-164550580.html) _And on Friday, the bureau announced that it was
raising the price for a thousand cubic feet for crude helium from $84 to $95_

[3] [http://www.nature.com/news/united-states-extends-life-of-
hel...](http://www.nature.com/news/united-states-extends-life-of-helium-
reserve-1.13819)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Regardless, this is something the market can correct for very, very
> easily._

This is something I don't really trust. We see that with oil and environmental
concerns - when things get scarcer, subsidies start, distorting the price.
Should we really put our hopes in the market, praying that it will save us?

~~~
moron4hire
Is government regulation any less of a trust game?

~~~
TeMPOraL
In principle, government has the capability to be less stupid than the market.
Companies are driven by competition, which seriously limits their choices and
forces them to dig us a deeper hole. The government can, in principle, just
arbitrarily decide that maybe, just maybe, we need to care about surviving for
longer than next fiscal quarter or at least try and not create ourselves a
hell on Earth.

Keep in mind that the golden age of capitalism was the beginning of Industrial
Revolution - it took a lot of blood and subsequent regulations to get us to
the point we're not slaving away 16hrs/day in a sweatshop only to die early
because some "entrepreneur" sold us poison.

~~~
jerf
"In principle, government has the capability to be less stupid than the
market."

It also has the capacity to be a great deal stupider, because it lacks the
immediate feedback of the market spanking it.

It is not sufficient to just wave the word government at a problem. You need
to do a full analysis of the incentives and demonstrate they are better. Just
as raw capitalism has the obvious problems of a short-term focus, being
driving by money above all else, and the issues of externalities being imposed
on others, governments have the obvious problems of regulatory capture by
interest groups, internal bureaucratic inefficiencies, creating high-level
administrators who don't particularly care about the problem and just use the
regulations as tokens in a war of turf-building, and being driven by politics
above all else. And that's just the high-level table-of-contents of the
problems both can have.

Governments are perfectly capable of deciding that up is down, blue is red,
and don't you _DARE_ question them or you're unpatriotic and we're going to
lock you up, and they're amazingly capable of retaining these beliefs for far
beyond their best-by dates because they have the power to just bull through
whatever problems may arise (until they suddenly run out).

In the particular case of a supply problem it is not at all clear to me that
letting the normal mechanisms of supply and demand handle it is that
catastrophic... these issues happen _all the time_ and you don't even notice.
Again, let me emphasize, this happens _daily_. It's what the markets deal
with. It's not like this is some bizarre scientific theory, it's to the level
of _engineering_. We do it all the time.

~~~
moron4hire
To tack on to this, we have government subsidies of oil and ethanol production
in the US, specifically to keep the price of gasoline lower than what the
market would clear on its own. Government, the one that our parent post
supposedly wants to regulate limited resources to save more for the future, is
actively encouraging consumption faster than normal.

The only case that I'm aware of in which government regulation has
successfully protected a limited resource is the fishing fields of Iceland,
and they fixed that issue by _creating_ a system of ownership--i.e. capital--
where there was only the commons before.

------
maaaats
One part of this I've never understood: I'm often told that I shouldn't buy or
enjoy helium balloons, as it's a waste of important helium. But such a balloon
costs almost nothing, if helium is so scarce and so important, shouldn't that
be reflected in the price?

At least that's how stocks work. If something will be in high demand/price in
the future, it will shift and be in high demand now.

~~~
Tepix
Same thing with Tuna - why is it still so cheap to buy a can of Tuna?

~~~
draugadrotten
"Markets" only work when there is a seller, and neither helium nor tuna have a
seller.

The price of Tuna is set of "how expensive is it to produce a can of tuna"
rather than "how many tuna are left in the ocean". In fact, the lower the
production cost of tuna fishing, the higher the risk that we empty the ocean
of all the tuna.

It's really a problem of the Tragedy of the commons. There is no cost of tuna
in the ocean, except the cost of fishing it. So it's a commons, and it will be
overexploited.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)

also: be sure to understand
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northw...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery)

~~~
fennecfoxen
Tuna from the ocean at large may be a "commons", sure, but helium comes from
natural gas deposits, which tend to be in areas where one nation or another
claims exclusive rights to said deposits, treats them like property, and seeks
to maximize the value they can extract from them (while still competing with
other resource-holders in a market).

------
tomlock
Rare earth metals were talked about in a similar manner very recently. Other
sources were found, and as a result, the alarm eased. One thing about rare
earth metals is that they can be a byproduct of metal production, but this
process is often ignored because the cost of the additional step can be more
expensive than the resulting output.

One thing people seem to not know is that helium is a common discarded
byproduct of oil extraction. Nuclear fission in the earth's core produces it,
and it gathers in porous underground oil reservoirs. I'd bet my life that as
prices of helium go up, these deposits get more attention paid to them.

I'm not convinced that a shortage of helium will be a crisis.

~~~
alephnil
Rare earth metals are not that rare. Most of them are about as abundant as
copper. The problem is their extraction. While copper is present in relative
high concentration in sulfide ores that are easy to extract, rare earths are
usually present in dilute concentration in many rocks, making it less
economical to extract, and is hard to extract even when there is a significant
portion of it, leaving behind much toxic chemicals. Furthermore, the rare
earths are very similar to each other and often present together, which makes
it hard to separate them. In addition, such ores often contain thorium and its
decay products, which makes tailings radioactive.

The shortage of rare earths has been because it has been uneconomical to
extract with any sort of environmental regulation in place. China has almost
none of them and has obtained a near monopoly for that reason. Here the "there
is no shortage ever" arguments from economists make sense. For helium, the
situation is different. The helium that is there is relatively easy to extract
(it is a certain percentage in some natural gas fields), but once it is gone
it is gone forever.

~~~
darkmighty
Exactly. It's hard to grasp, but most other elements have gradual scaling
solutions, i.e. worst case we have to resort to some more expansive extraction
method. With helium this scaling is abrupt: reserves become orders of
magnitude more expansive. It makes total sense to let the market create a
gradual scaling of prices in anticipation for depletion.

Basically all other elements we can do some recycling and recapturing somehow;
once leaked helium is just gone forever.

------
SRasch
To quote my own answer on that question:

No: we will never run out of helium, it's just a question of price (which is
likely to go up).

There is a method of actually producing helium: as a product of nuclear decay,
smaller quantities of helium (He) could be made in nuclear power plants.

Nevertheless, as @ghshepard says, in the short and medium-term supply will
simply come from other natural gas fields if/when the price goes up.

The Helium-scarcity misunderstanding is the same as with almost every other
historical feared resource depletion. At current prices and production
methods, supply is finite, but at higher price points, new production methods
become economically viable.

A higher helium price means two things: reduced demand by shifting to
substitutes and increased production by using more expensive production
technologies (and of course, if the price goes up more people will try to
innovate cheaper solutions).

Today helium is practically free. While we would never run out of Helium, it
is not unlikely that at some point prices may go up for a while. That,
however, is not really such a big deal.

[http://www.quora.com/Are-we-really-running-out-of-
helium/ans...](http://www.quora.com/Are-we-really-running-out-of-
helium/answer/Sondre-Rasch)

~~~
omegaham
Good ol' Julian Simon to the rescue, again. We will _always_ come up with some
alternative.

"We're running out of X" is always louder than "We've found another way to
extract it, sound the alarms again in forty years." Then we'll come up with
some other method, and they'll set back the Malthus Doom Date by another forty
years. And eventually, someone will come up with a completely different
alternative that doesn't use it at all, and a previously vital resource will
only have niche applications.

Of course, in some cases, the alternative might require a lot of hardship. I'm
sure we'd get by if gasoline was 20 bucks a gallon. It would suck, and all of
us would be driving motor scooters and riding bicycles to work, but we would
get by.

~~~
mjburgess
You can tell an american when oil crisis implies scooters not public
transport.

~~~
omegaham
Unfortunately, the vast distances required make public transport limited in
effectiveness in the US. They're great in the cities, but the very low
population density outside of the cities means that it's not going to do very
well there.

When I lived in Arizona, I was driving about 50 kilometers per day. There was
no bus or train, as there just weren't enough passengers to make it worth
building. Driving was the only option unless I was going to bike 50 kilometers
per day in the heat.

Here in Oregon, there are bus routes, but it would take me more than an hour
to get to work on the bus. By car, it's about ten minutes. I could definitely
bike to work, but it rains a lot here. :)

Incidentally, a huge hike in gas prices would probably force a lot of people
to move to the cities. They'll need public transport to get to work if they
can't drive. But seeing as how city living is so expensive, they'll probably
keep driving (smaller cars and motor scooters) for as long as they can.

~~~
vidarh
Norway has a population density 1/2 of the US, yet public transport works well
for large proportions of journeys even in the rural districts.

For comparison, Norway is larger than Arizona, with a smaller population (or a
bit larger than New Mexico and a bit smaller than Montana, with a much higher
population than those two - so clearly you do have some areas that truly are
rural enough for public transport to be hard to do right; then again,
California is not _that_ much larger, and most of California still has an
atrocious public transit system...).

Yes, there certainly _are_ areas where you can't really get by without a car,
in Norway, so it's not like I'm expecting public transport to be viable
everywhere in Arizona either. But in Norway that's because very few people
live there. Just like the US low overall population density is largely down to
vast practically empty areas. "Nobody" _cares_ if there's no public transport
in the middle of Alaska, or in the rural parts of states like New Mexico and
Montana that have low population density to start with, and are pretty much
"empty" outside a few cities.

And oil is not the explanation - most of Norways public transport system
predates the oil exploration, and was built at a time when Norway was far less
wealthy than the US.

The ten lowest density US states have lower average population density than
Norway, but they "only" house about 12 million people. And even for the rest
of the country, most of the low density states still have higher density
clusters. The top ten states house about 170 million people, with an aggregate
population density of around 200 per square mile - far above places like
Norway.

It other words: Distance is an excuse. It's down to politics and a culture
centered around the car.

Sure, public transport will never cover 100% of journeys, but that's not the
point.

~~~
shiftpgdn
I think you hit the nail on the head about being cenetered around the car.
Cities are built at "car-scale" where every store has a massive parking lot
(usually the size of 5-6 soccer pitches) directly infront of the building.
It's usually outright hostile to pedestrians. Unfortunately this is a
byproduct of our cities being built in the age of the Automobile and not in
1000AD like Oslo.

Unfortunately the only way to fix it would be to have city ordinances which
specify parking maximum and maximum offset from the street for a building.

------
dredmorbius
For those interested in helium's price history, cost per thousand cubic feet,
1999 - 2011 rose from $42 to $160, or 3.8x.

[http://www.extremetech.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/09/helium...](http://www.extremetech.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/09/helium-prices.jpg)

------
gilbetron
This is one of those questions I use to see if sites know how to research a
topic. We have proven reserves to last at current consumption rates for 300
years. A little googling leads you to the facts, which is that we have plenty
of helium to last a long, long time. A plant is coming online that will
provide nearly the entire planets consumption of helium for then next 50
years. And this is just with places where we _know_ we can get helium out of
the earth. We put helium in balloons because it is so cheap because of
abundance. It is almost as bad as when I hear cries of the "coming phosphorus
shortage".

------
nradov
As an active scuba diver I feel sort of bad about breathing helium knowing
that it's a non-renewable resource. For a single dive in the 50m depth range
I'll typically use something like 1000l of He (as measured at standard
temperature and pressure). The retail price has gone up by a factor of 3 in
the past several years so while it's still somewhat affordable we clearly
won't be able to continue doing open-circuit technical diving indefinitely.
Some of my friends have switched to closed-circuit rebreathers that use very
little helium but those are far more dangerous.

~~~
gaius
Rebreathers are a _lot_ safer these days, esp. units like the Sentinel which
have extensive self tests.

~~~
nradov
There are still several rebreather failure modes due to user error or
equipment failure which can kill the user and won't necessarily be detectable
by a self test. So although rebreathers can be made somewhat _safer_ they will
never be _as safe_ as open circuit for sport diving. At least with OC gear, if
anything goes wrong the problem is hard to miss and the solution is always
simple.

~~~
gaius
On the Sentinel you can switch to the BOV in a second, unless you're an
alpinist :-)

~~~
nradov
It's tough to switch if you're already unconscious due to hypoxia. You really
can't notice the onset of hypoxia fast enough to fix the problem. In theory
that shouldn't happen if the diver sets up the gear correctly and pays
attention to the alarms, but in practice sometimes divers make mistakes and
end up dead.

There was an incident in my area several years ago where a rebreather diver
missed a step in his pre-dive checks and jumped off the boat with his oxygen
valve off. By the time he swam to the anchor line he had consumed most of the
oxygen in the loop (while probably not noticing the alarms), passed out, and
drowned. That was user error but the fact remains that if he had been using
open circuit gear, a simple error like jumping off the boat with a closed tank
valve almost certainly wouldn't have killed him.

~~~
gaius
You can jump in on OC valves off and nothing in your BC and sink like a
stone...

~~~
nradov
No you will not sink anything like a stone as long as you have a properly
balanced rig set for neutral buoyancy with empty tanks. Negative buoyancy at
the start of an ocean dive is around 11kg at most. The problem will be obvious
and unless you totally panic you can swim back to the boat, or reach around
and turn on a valve. You won't just suddenly pass out, like what can happen if
you make a series of bad user errors with a rebreather.

~~~
gaius
The divers who can do valve drills, are not the ones making this kind of
mistake :-)

------
j1z0
Correct me if I'm wrong but are not hydrogen and helium two of the most
abundant elements in the galaxy? If we ever were to let it all float into
outer space (if that's even possible) by then couldn't we just harvest it in
space? I know that's by no means cost effective with today's technology but
we're talking decades before we might actually run out right.

~~~
dredmorbius
Hydrogen has a high affinity for bonding with other elements. Most notably
water (H2O) and in varying ratios, with carbon (hydrocarbons). Both water and
hydrocarbons, along with other forms, are heavy enough to not escape from
Earth's gravitational pull at a high rate (though some estimates suggest that
a large fraction of Earth's original water has been lost to space).

Helium is on of the noble gasses -- they either do not react or react only
very reluctantly with other elements.

Combined with helium's low molecular weight, and since _gaseous_ helium is
_atomic_ helium, free helium tends to escape into space.

And as Douglas Adams noted: Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly,
hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down
the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.

There's little chance that pure gold could be profitably recovered from space.
Let alone helium.

------
vilda
Similar concerns were raised when China embargoed rare metals. In reality, the
industry adapted smoothly and it's not the topic anymore.

And yes, strictly per economic theory (which is very practical) we will never
run out of Helium. Just the price will rise up to the point when alternatives
(and a research into) will became economical.

------
sschueller
On a tour at CERN I was told that 1/3 of the worlds helium is 'stored' and
used at CERN. Can anyone confirm this?

~~~
madaxe_again
In terms of total helium in circulation at any point - this isn't an
unreasonable assertion. They use vast quantities of the stuff to keep
superconducting magnets and power transmission lines at operational
temperatures, and the LHC is far from being the only experiment at CERN....

But on further examination...

helium is about 0.1785g/l 1 cubic foot = 28.317 litres So 1 cf. of He has a
mass of ~5.05g

Cern use 120 metric tons of He in the LHC beam tube magnets alone
([http://home.web.cern.ch/about/engineering/cryogenics-low-
tem...](http://home.web.cern.ch/about/engineering/cryogenics-low-temperatures-
high-performance) ), so let's say 200 tons at all of CERN, as the beam tube
magnets are a pretty major application, and the other accelerators
(PS/SPS/etc.) are considerably smaller and slower and have less intensive
requirements, and other experiments altogether probably use a fair, but not
crazy amount.

So... 200 tons of helium equates to 200000000/5.05 = 39.6 million cubic feet,
at STP.

So, lots and lots of helium, but not 1/3 of the world's supply.

Oh, fun fact - that amount of helium would be enough to lift 1100 tonnes of
payload from the ground... about two fully laden 747s.

------
amelius
I guess we can find most of our helium near the top of our atmosphere :)

------
emodendroket
Sounds like we better keep using it for party balloons.

------
copsarebastards
Betteridge's law holds.

------
lemoncucumber
For the last time, you idiot: it's not hydrogen, it's HELIUM!

And what about that are you still not getting, exactly?

Well, obviously the core concept, Lana!

------
Spooky23
I purchased about 30 helium-filled balloons for my 3-year old's birthday party
for about $10.

So I would say that no, we're not running out of helium, by any meaningful
definition of "running out".

~~~
chc
400 years ago, somebody went on a hunting trip and killed a bunch of dodo
birds. What you're saying is kind of similar to that guy saying, "Eh, I killed
30 of the beasts and nobody tried to stop me. So I would say that no, the dodo
is not in danger of extinction."

~~~
mark-r
The passenger pigeon would be an even better example. To quote Wikipedia, "The
species went from being one of the most abundant birds in the world during the
19th century to extinction early in the 20th century."

------
drinchev
Offtopic

This post is a proof that the right time of a post is crucial to popularity. I
posted the same link ( actually I'm not sure how HN passed this one through )
a couple of months ago [1] and it was not as popular ;)

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8884999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8884999)

------
aaron695
A good example on how bad quora is.

The top current answer is basically

> there is no way to cheaply make more

Which applies to anything in existence, everything will run out, hence a
pointless waste of time statement that moronic philosophers pull out when they
are ignorant on the topic.

Later links are more interesting, like -

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/27/what-
grea...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/27/what-great-helium-
shortage/)

~~~
emodendroket
Are you denying the existence of any distinction between renewable and non-
renewable resources, or what?

~~~
beeworker
It's a tempting thing, given the sun will eventually burn out.

~~~
emodendroket
Yeah, OK, but the linked piece is not arguing that we're in danger of running
out of helium in thousands of years.

