>if helium is so scarce and so important, shouldn't that be reflected in the price? //
It's like other "mined" raw materials.
Coal takes millions of years to form, requires large quantities of vegetation/animal life and large areas of land. If you charged based on replacement cost then coal prices would be effectively infinite.
As with helium. Helium doesn't bond with other atoms to make heavier molecules and so eventually leaks from the atmosphere after release. In order to recover a supply you're going to need to capture it from radioactive decay or do extraterrestrial mining or some similar high cost activity. So it's [comparatively] an infinite replacement cost. However, it's released as a by-product and we currently have enough. When we run out of natural gas sources we'll run out of our main He source too and using helium will become extremely expensive. Even at that point we'll still not be paying the "replacement" cost, just the cost of extracting from more expensive sources.
We should be, as a race, preserving helium but there is currently no economic incentive, the incentive lies in the future when our current round of magnates and politicians will likely be dead.
It's like other "mined" raw materials.
Coal takes millions of years to form, requires large quantities of vegetation/animal life and large areas of land. If you charged based on replacement cost then coal prices would be effectively infinite.
As with helium. Helium doesn't bond with other atoms to make heavier molecules and so eventually leaks from the atmosphere after release. In order to recover a supply you're going to need to capture it from radioactive decay or do extraterrestrial mining or some similar high cost activity. So it's [comparatively] an infinite replacement cost. However, it's released as a by-product and we currently have enough. When we run out of natural gas sources we'll run out of our main He source too and using helium will become extremely expensive. Even at that point we'll still not be paying the "replacement" cost, just the cost of extracting from more expensive sources.
We should be, as a race, preserving helium but there is currently no economic incentive, the incentive lies in the future when our current round of magnates and politicians will likely be dead.