Slashdot Mirror
Helium Crisis Approaching
vrmlguy writes "Within nine years the National Helium Reserve will be depleted, according to an article in Science Daily. It quotes Dr. Lee Sobotka, of Washington University in St. Louis: 'Helium is non-renewable and irreplaceable. Its properties are unique and unlike hydrocarbon fuels (natural gas or oil), there are no biosynthetic ways to make an alternative to helium. All should make better efforts to recycle it.' (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a local article with quotes from Dr. Sobotka and representatives of the balloon industry.) On Earth, Helium is found mixed with natural gas, but few producers capture it. Extracting it from the atmosphere is not cost-effective. The US created a stockpile, the National Helium Reserve, in 1925 for use by military dirigibles, but stopped stockpiling it in 1995 as a cost-saving measure."
Oh, no!
Could someone please explain how exactly is there a crisis? I mean, the article states that the only thing that is happening is that the US national helium reserve is being depleted, an artificial stockpile program that stopped stockpiling due to being too expensive. Then it is stated that there are plenty sources of helium but no one bothers to take advantage of them due to the fact that at the moment it simply does not make anyone any money. So, to sum things up, no one bothers to store helium because it isn't cost effective and no one bothers to mine helium because there isn't any money to be made by it.
Doesn't that mean that the offer outweighs the demand by a landslide? Doesn't this mean that there were a lot of people smooching the US national helium reserve for a long time?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
It's not the End of the World, but you can see it from here, and if we're not careful Things Could Go Poorly. The problem is the smartest people around think "technology" will fix the "resource" problem. Given unlimited energy and resources, perhaps this is true, but we don't live in a world where there are unlimited resources. So, if we're at the top of the heap - look around you: this is as good as it gets.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I don't think our society remembers being in a time of shortage - and I think that's a problem. It's easy to consume and throw away things if you don't think there will be a problem in getting more, and that attitude is pretty wasteful.
What exactly uses Helium that is all that important?
According to wikipedia the applications of helium
* Because it is lighter than air, airships and balloons are inflated with helium for lift. In airships, helium is preferred over hydrogen because it is not flammable and has 92.64% of the buoyancy (or lifting power) of the alternative hydrogen (see calculation.)
* For its low solubility in water, the major part of human blood, air mixtures of helium with oxygen and nitrogen (Trimix), with oxygen only (Heliox), with common air (heliair), and with hydrogen and oxygen (hydreliox), are used in deep-sea breathing systems to reduce the high-pressure risk of nitrogen narcosis, decompression sickness, and oxygen toxicity.
* At extremely low temperatures, liquid helium is used to cool certain metals to produce superconductivity, such as in superconducting magnets used in magnetic resonance imaging. Helium at low temperatures is also used in cryogenics.
* For its inertness and high thermal conductivity, neutron transparency, and because it does not form radioactive isotopes under reactor conditions, helium is used as a coolant in some nuclear reactors, such as pebble-bed reactors.
* Helium is used as a shielding gas in arc welding processes on materials that are contaminated easily by air. It is especially useful in overhead welding, because it is lighter than air and thus floats, whereas other shielding gases sink.
* Because it is inert, helium is used as a protective gas in growing silicon and germanium crystals, in titanium and zirconium production, in gas chromatography, and as an atmosphere for protecting historical documents. This property also makes it useful in supersonic wind tunnels.
* In rocketry, helium is used as an ullage medium to displace fuel and oxidizers in storage tanks and to condense hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel. It is also used to purge fuel and oxidizer from ground support equipment prior to launch and to pre-cool liquid hydrogen in space vehicles. For example, the Saturn V booster used in the Apollo program needed about 13 million cubic feet (370,000 m) of helium to launch.[2]
* The gain medium of the helium-neon laser is a mixture of helium and neon.
* Because it diffuses through solids at a rate three times that of air, helium is used as a tracer gas to detect leaks in high-vacuum equipment and high-pressure containers, as well as in other applications with less stringent requirements such as heat exchangers, valves, gas panels, etc.
* Because of its extremely low index of refraction, the use of helium reduces the distorting effects of temperature variations in the space between lenses in some telescopes.
* The age of rocks and minerals that contain uranium and thorium, radioactive elements that emit helium nuclei called alpha particles, can be discovered by measuring the level of helium with a process known as helium dating.
* The high thermal conductivity and sound velocity of helium is also desirable in thermoacoustic refrigeration. The inertness of helium adds to the environmental advantage of this technology over conventional refrigeration systems which may contribute to ozone depleting and global warming effects.
* Because helium alone is less dense than atmospheric air, it will change the timbre (not pitch[12]) of a person's voice when inhaled. However, inhaling it from a typical commercial source, such as that used to fill balloons, can be dangerous due to the risk of asphyxiation from lack of oxygen, and the number of contaminants that may be present. These could include trace amounts of other gases, in addition to aerosolized lubricating oil.
Maybe I'm missing the usefulness of some of those but it doesn't seem like a big deal.
TFA says few natural gas producers recover the helium from their wells. If the price of helium rises due to scarcity, those producers will recover the helium. Problem solved.
Which I guess makes hydrogen the Paris Hilton of elements? Alone at the top??
It also bonds with pretty much anything it meets.
I was going to mod you up but then I remembered I time when I didn't have mod points and thought better of it.
1) Inhales balloon
2) ?????
3) <squeakyvoice> Profit! </squeakyvoice>
Actually - Capitalism can solve this problem rather readily. The problem is that the US government subsidized Helium so that it is dirt cheap, so it is used in situations where it isn't essential.
Natural gas producers throw it away because it costs more to make than you can sell it for. The only reason for that is the US used to pay $5/liter for it and sells it for $1/liter and no longer buys it. (I made up those numbers - they're just illustrative but reflect the problem.)
Assuming there is a decent amount left underground once the shortage becomes acute people will be willing to pay more for helium. Once the market value raises above the cost to produce it people who dig it up will stop throwing it away. At that part the market would regulate its own helium supply/demand.
There really aren't any externalities in this market that I can see (unlike with fossil fuels - where pollution/CO2 needs to be accounted for) - so there is no reason the market wouldn't work. The main reason it isn't working now is because somebody messed with the market for the last 50 years and it will take some time to correct...
No, they are filled with helium, but after the speeches they've just given up all hope and are too depressed to float anymore.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
That's not really practical. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that a fusion reactor can convert 10% of the power from its reaction to electricity.
The most promising reaction, according to Wikipedia, is that of:
First of all, there is the Deuterium. This is harvested from Heavy Water, water that has one or two deuterium atoms instead of normal hydrogen atoms. This heavy water costs approximately US$300/kg[2] for consumers, and the deuterium produced approximately US$1/L[3]. This is a lot. Deuterium has a molar mass of approximately two g/mol, with one mole of a gas taking up one cubic metre at standard temperature/pressure. At US$1/L, this deuterium costs US$1000/m^3, or US$500/g (I'm assuming that gases volumes refer to STP. If I'm wrong, feel free to point this out---I've never dealt with bottled gas).
Next is tritium. At US$30000/g[4], it's hardly cheap. For the reaction to take place, you need the two isotopes to react stoichiometrically (in the proper ratio). IOW, for each mole of tritium, you need a mole of deuterium. Converted to masses (tritium's molar mass is approximately three), this means that you need a ratio of 3g tritium : 2g deuterium. For each mole of Tritium, you will get a mole of helium. Because we're dealing with helium-4, the molar mass is ~4g/mol. The rest of the mass is made up by the neutron; this doesn't matter to us. Therefore, to make four grams of helium, we need three grams of tritium, and two grams of deuterium. At the prices given, this is US$91000 per four grams of helium, which, because it is one mole, is one cubic metre at STP. Helium, as of 1986 (yeah, yeah, I know) cost US$37.50/1000f^3. This is about US$1.30/m^3. Think about those prices. 9.1 x 10^4 US$/m^3, vs 1.3 x 10^0 US$/m^3. That's almost five orders of magnitude. There would have to be be a bloody good reason to be using helium at those prices.
In conclusion:
Helium-4 produced by fusion will cost five orders of magnitude more than current prices
References:
Yes, nuclear fusion produces helium.
The fusion of 1kg of deuterium produces near enough 1kg of helium, and, umm, 2.7MeV per fusion * 6*10^23 atoms per mole * 500 moles of D atoms per kilogram / 2 deuteriums per fusion * 1.6e-19 joules per eV = 64.8 terajoules of energy.
So, a one-gigawatt fusion power plant would produce a kilo of helium every eighteen days; if the current electricity use of France were provided entirely by fusion plants, you'd get thirty tons a year. The large hadron collider uses 120 tons of helium, but efficiently; present planetary helium use is about seventy-five tons a day.
For comparison, the US produces from natural gas about 76 million cubic metres of helium a year; a cubic metre of helium weighs 1000/22.4*4 grams, so 76 million cubic metres weigh about fifteen thousand tons.
Ever fill a balloon with carbon dioxide then drop it? It gives visual meaning to the phrase 'went over like a lead balloon.'
Now that would be a cool sight. Dropping C02 filled balloons at a political rally. They wouldn't float down. They'd plummet straight to the ground and wouldn't even bounce. It wouldn't look natural.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Hmmm.... There's a joke here about hot air, but I can't quite get it off the ground.....