The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried.
The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried.
MRI machines need thousands of liters of liquid helium to function. Health care workers say they can’t afford any disruptions to the helium supply chain.
Privatizing the US national helium reserve. Gonna laugh when in a few years the government of another nation ends up owning it. Helium is dwindling finite resource that key technological infrastructure relies upon.
Gonna laugh when in a few years the government of another nation ends up owning it.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1114964240/new-battery-technology-china-vanadium
A bunch of scrappy engineers made a next generation battery and sold the technology to the US government
The government never bothered to manufacture anything. Instead they sold everything to China and now they’re already releasing public versions of the batteries. Now the US doesn’t have any knowledge on the batteries or even the factories to build them
Holy shit, why would you do this. Neoliberals are the stupidest people on the planet. "Oh well we have to sell it off because it's not profitable enough!" sure am glad this won't cause the price of helium to surge resulting in a hike in MRI costs.
This has similar vibes to being an addict and selling your playstation or couch to buy drugs, but at least drugs are fun where is this is just being done to accumulate more capital for a dozen crusty old fucks
capitalists are the stupidest fucking people on earth
Looks like we're already out, bought a "helium-filled" HDD and it doesn't even float.
When I looked into this a couple years ago, my understanding was that yes, the supply is finite, but the amount we have in storage is a lot and we slowing mining operations because we have enough on reserve for a while.
It’s over for balloons
prepare for Balloonpocalypse
owns it now