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Why the World Is Running Out of Helium
jamie writes "The US National Helium Reserve stores a billion cubic meters of helium, half the world supply, in an old natural gasfield. The array of pipes and mines runs 200 miles from Texas to Kansas. In the name of deficit reduction, we're selling it all off for cheap. Physics professor and Nobel laureate Robert Richardson says: 'In 1996, the US Congress decided to sell off the strategic reserve and the consequence was that the market was swelled with cheap helium because its price was not determined by the market. The motivation was to sell it all by 2015. The basic problem is that helium is too cheap. The Earth is 4.7 billion years old and it has taken that long to accumulate our helium reserves, which we will dissipate in about 100 years. One generation does not have the right to determine availability forever.' Another view is The Impact of Selling the Federal Helium Reserve, the government study from 10 years ago that suggested the government's price would end up being over market value by 25% — but cautioned that this was based on the assumption that demand would grow slowly, and urged periodic reviews of the state of the industry."
I like how we can talk about peak helium but the second you try to discuss peak oil or peak coal you're a treehugger, an alarmist or trying to destroy the economy. I guess we have to wait until we're certain we're only a century away from using the last of a resource that took the Earth 4.7 billion years to accumulate before it's okay to start to talk about appropriate measures ...
My work here is dung.
"One generation does not have the right to determine availability for ever.", eh? Helium, eh? Let us all form a circle and talk about how we should all help save the helium for our grandchildren and ignore that we already used up more than half the oil, plutonium and other important energy sources. And copper. And we are killing off a whole range of biological diversity. But let us all ignore that and talk about the helium.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Your basic blimp is also slow, can't carry much weight, and can't deal with storms very well.
I think you're confused. The price was set in the "Helium Privitization Act of 1996," that's simply a fact and has nothing to do with market forces.
When the government makes a law which says "we will sell our helium for $1.50 per cubic meter until it is gone" and that supply is 1/3 the global total market for two decades, the "market" has not set the price.