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.
One relevant part that I couldn't really find in the article is that helium is so light that it escapes Earth's atmosphere when released into the air.
So any helium that is released to the air is permanently gone.
There is also no known way to synthesize helium, and it also doesn't renew itself at all on Earth.
It's also the only substance we have to cool stuff really far down. That's why e.g. MRIs depend on it.
And we put this precious, finite and often life saving substance into kids' balloons to make them bobble nicely through the air.
We could recover a lot more helium from natural gas production (some fields contain a lot) but right now it's vented because it doesn't have enough value for the operators. Only a few places worldwide bother recovering it during refinement.
But as it gets scarcer the price will go up. Unfortunately the already vented helium is gone forever 😔
It does somewhat renew itself due to alpha decay, but that probably isn't fast enough to matter.
from the wiki article on Helium:
an estimated 3000 metric tons of helium are generated per year throughout the lithosphere.
I think the main issue here is not that we are loosing helium on a planetary scale but that the easy to reach helium from gas wells is wasted. We will never run out of helium at our current rate of consumption before the sun goes nova, if we consider all sources on earth, but it will get a lot more expensive and the supply will get less steady.
Hydrogen fusion plants would produce helium in the reaction, which would need to be constantly filtered out.
Would be nice if that was the reason.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see in the article the reason why the stockpile I'd being sold. This I want to know.
The reason the stockpile was there was it being classified as a strategic resource during the time around WW1 and 2 when airships were a big thing. It's just not really something the government thinks they need to be involved in anymore. Though you could argue its use is becoming more strategic again.
But anyway I'm not defending the sale, I just believe this was the reason they wanted to sell it.
Helium Stewardship Act of 2013.
It sounds like the government was doing a poor job with it.
Edit: Actually it sounds like part of the poor job was due to implementation of the Helium Privatization Act of 1996, and 2013 was trying to fix some of it. It's expensive and government has been trying to get out of it for a while. (The GAO also has some information).
Every 90s democrat knows if it's important for science, health, and national security it's better in the hands of private industry. Also screw welfare. (-Bill Clinton, 1996)
Thank you, and @Zworf for the info!
I guess yay for public-private action 🙃but I guess I would prefer proper communal administration.