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The Outfall of a Helium-3 Crisis
astroengine writes "The United States is currently recovering from a helium isotope crisis that last year sent low-temperature physicists scrambling, sky-rocketed the cost of hospital MRI's, and threw national security staff out on a search mission for alternate ways to detect dirty bombs. Now the panic is subsiding, what is being done to conserve, or replace, helium-3?"
based on how the government usually operates I expect this would be a typical response.
Just get it from the moon, it's much more abundant there. Or, skim from the cloudtops of the gas giants.
Mind you, all I know about the subject is an old Macintosh game ...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
There's tons of it on the moon....
i have no idea what this post is even about, slashdot has really gone downhill
If most of the helium-3 demand is driven by lung x-rays, and you suddenly need $5000 of He-3 instead of $500 of He-3 to do an x-ray, then the result will simply be fewer people and animals getting x-rays.
Unless the situation is that government funded Medicaid/Medicare is going cover the $5000 cost for the x-ray, in which case the result will simply be the owners He-3 stockpiles getting insanely rich at the expense of taxpayers.
Probably the same as to peak oil and other pressing issues - bury head in sand == ignore == trust in god, it's His will anyway.
Wild guess: stop looking for dirty bombs? If they are as common as Al-Qaeda operatives, the US gov't needs only to stop searching for fictitious boogymen and the demand will fall drastically.
naa, slashdot 3.0 already used up all the frosty piss
and it shows....
The MRI imaging requires the patient hold his or her breath for 10 seconds. Instead of just breathing out normally, the patient exhales into a helium-impermeable bag
Note to self: next time doing MRI in the hospital, do not inhale that stuff, don't want to imagine where it came from...
There are large amounts of He3 being made in heavy water reactors that is not being collected. Until now there has been little motivation to go through the trouble and expense of modifying these reactors to extract it, but it's not THAT hard. At some point it will just be done and then we'll be fine. This is only a short-term problem. DNRTFA, of course.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
So is this one of the impacts of The Helium Privatization Act of 1996 or is separating the Helium-3 from the more common isotopes too energy intensive to have made the Bush Dome Reservoir a viable source?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
and you end up with more than enough he3 and a better probability that earth survives the next world war.
The reason the helium is becoming scarce on earth is because it's too light and escapes from the earth's atmosphere. So how do we stop that? Simple, make it heavier like we did to our own fat asses. If there is one thing we are great at it, it's getting fat, why can't we extend that to Helium? "So Mr. Helium 3, would you like to supersize that today?"
By the time we are done with helium it won't even be able to get off the floor, let alone escape the atmosphere.
Monstar L
Expect a new "temporary" tax on airline tickets to pay for the Helium-3 increases for the TSA. Once an alternative to Helium-3 or a new source that removes the shortage appears . . . don't expect the "temporary" tax to ever go away.
Remember, once our loving government get's a hold of our money it is no longer our money, it's their money and they don't feel any obligation to ever let us have it back.
Am I the only one noticing the plummeting quality in journalism across the board? Besides the drawbacks of relying on spell-check and other automation, the gradual shift in the publishing industry towards the Internet seems to have dented profit margins significantly enough to affect the QA process. Books, papers, magazines ... they all seem to be suffering from this malaise.
This is a consequence of the decline in the U.S's nuclear industry. Tritium is usually produced in nuclear reactors. It's useful for several purposes, from boosting nuclear weapons to exit sign lighting in aircraft.
Tritium is made by irradiating lithium with neutrons Tritium decays with a half-life of 12 years. He3, which is stable, is one of the decay products, and that's where He3 comes from. (This is a commercial application of transmutation.)
The US used to have a reactor at Savannah River to produce tritium, but that was shut down in 1988. Since the early 1990s, there have been efforts to set up a new source, and presently, two power reactors of the Tennessee Valley Authority are used to produce tritium, A few extra lithium rods are put in, and changed out occasionally to recover the tritium.
The He3 shortage is a side effect of the tritium shortage.
Was an accident, really; Dick Cheney wanted to sound like Donald Duck, but since he's three-faced...
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Yes, what is an outfall?
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. -Plato
Hedwards is fully entitled to believe that scarce medical resources should be conserved for human, rather than animal use.
Let's say you had very little money, and your mother and your dog is sick. Which one among you would have the dog treated?
Some bastard keeps inhaling it to make chipmunk voices. Oh wait! That's me! *Puff* Squeak squeak suck it bitches!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
its one of the best for taking info and i like it.
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/automated-forex-trading-system-find-the-best-automatic-forex-trading-tool-2066204.html
There is lots of He3 on the moon, getting to the moon is not hard, the hard, dangerous and expensive part is reaching escape velocity, make this far cheaper and safer and not just He3 becomes more available, but a whole universe.
The high cost to the human race's colonisation of space is caused by the danger and complexity, of reaching and leaving escape velocity, within the earth's atmosphere, the reason for this is the shuttle has to lift off with over 700 tons of fuel, the whole thing is made even more complicated, by the fact that to survive the heat of around 17000 miles an hour reentry into the atmosphere, by covering the surface of the shuttle, with the equivalent of bathroom tiles
There is lots of He3 on the moon, getting to the moon is not hard, the hard, dangerous and expensive part is reaching
The Space Shuttle turned out to be an expensive and dangerous white elephant, the reason the Shuttle was so expensive is, because of its complexity with millions of different manufactured parts.
There is another route, we can reach the edge of space no problem Burt Rutan proved this with Space Ship one, when he won the 'X' prize by reaching over 100 km twice in one week.
Yes the Shuttle was 'reusable' but in name only. They could not have turned that around in a week.
One idea could be to create rocket fuel on the moon, there is lots of water on the moon, use solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen which makes very good rocket fuel.
Use the rocket fuel to fuel a space tug, use the space tug to accelerate and decelerate Space Ship one, to and from escape velocity in the safety of a vacuum.
The moon is the door to the solar system.
Going to Mars is like 'trying to run before we can walk' we need to build a base on the moon first.
There is lots of silica on the moon, silica is the main component of glass, what we could do is build a huge glass dome with an aluminium skeleton and live under it, some estimates have moon rock, with around 40% oxygen, thus we can breathe if it is extracted.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
That would send the price of American "beer" skyrocketing due to the reduced supply of the key ingredient.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
There is a lifetime supply of He3 on the moon. It's just sitting on the surface ready to scoop up. He3 is more valuable than gold. We also need it for fusion reactors. A moon mission would re-unite this country and get out from under the tyranny of OPEC.
Very rare and new for me. Can somebody post a link where i can find more information on this topic.?
Perfume
"A promising alternative gas for hunting down radioactive neutrons and gamma particles for example is boron, but for medical purposes nothing beats helium-3."
It's Dolomite Baby!
I too miss the old story icons. . .
Another possible use for He3 is in fusion reactors that can directly generate electricity with little radioactive by-product.
Congress actually just passed a measured dictating the US is to sell of several billion tones (our entire national reserve) of He to help with the deficit.
and as a direct consumer and producer, we have not been impacted by the H3 shortage at all really. Anomalous materials research continues on despite the recent resonance cascade event.
regards,
G. Freeman
Theoretical physicist, Lead.
Black Mesa Research
Good people go to bed earlier.
Y'all is looking at the possibility of gettin' yer He3 from Ontario, Canada as well.
Sounds like an awesome console game - where do I buy it from?
We don't dare try mining the far side of the moon! The Space Nazi's would get us!!!!!
http://www.ironsky.net/site/
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Obviously, He should have made more He.