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Congress Reaches Agreement ... On Helium
Despite the wrangling that's resulted in a government shut-down, Congress managed last week to agree on one thing: Helium. Reader gbrumfiel writes: "The U.S. holds vast helium reserves which it sells to scientists and private industry. According to NPR, a new law was needed to allow the helium to continue to flow. Congress passed it late last week, but only after a year-long lobbying effort and intense debate (and in the end, Senator Ted Cruz opposed the measure). Can a new bipartisanship rise out of this cooperation? Or will hot air prevail on Capitol Hill? (Insert your helium joke here.)" Apparently, helium is not yet so scarce that it's not available in balloons at the grocery store.
Children's balloons use recycled or low grade helium which can't be used for other more worthy purposes. It's not really a waste.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Thank god we have politicians in America willing to stand up for not doing their jobs.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I'm not sure how I feel about this. Does every competing hospital in my region need to run its own MRI machine(and yes, that's the biggest use of helium) wasting dozens of kilograms of liquid helium a year? That won't lower the price of my procedure substantially, but it does throw away literal tons of the most irreplaceable resource on the planet.
When it counts, you can always count on congress to come together, and do the wrong thing.
How did the U.S. start stockpiling helium? I see no mention in the article of the actual process for collecting and storing it.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I plan to do some deep Scuba dives next month and I will be breathing high quality, pure Helium mixed in with my Oxygen and Nitrogen to prevent Nitrogen narcosis at depth. I'm glad the supply will continue in the future and I hope there is a plan to replace what the US Government has stockpiled.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Apparently, helium is not yet so scarce that it's not available in balloons at the grocery store.
Depends where you look. Many outlets around the region of Montreal stopped selling helium balloons because of the scarcity. Some voluntarily due to local hospitals having difficulties keeping their MRIs runnings and some due to prices going up.
If helium can be produced from renewable natural gas, for example landfills, why not sell off the entire stockpile?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
The Strategic Helium Reserve began in the early 20th century as a gas supply for airships, and because the prime source of coolant for the space/missile programs of the Cold War. Most of our helium is collected during natural gas production.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
...cos if they let the democrats get their way the phony overstimulated US economy will implode that much quicker, all the keynesian bullshit can be shown as the total fraud that it is, and then a real free market recovery can commence in ernest.
as long as the world remains addicted to cheap keynesian money printing, central banking, price-fixing of counterfeit fiat money, and ever increasing government spending, deficits and debt, the burden on taxpayers (aka the working middle class) will always increase till they are pushed into poverty and everyone ends up dependent on government welfare except for the wealthy buddies of politicians in washington dc... which is pretty much where the ussr was before 1985
jfk said "communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both" and he was right
"I'm cranky and off-topic. Listen to me because of how much I hate those I disagree with"
Helium production is just lacking. There is more than enough helium - at reasonable concentrations - in many natural gas fields to cover all of the demand on the planet for literally thousands of years, at current rates.
There are also some helium extraction plants either under construction or in the process of coming on line right now. There's a new one, in Qatar, which will account for 25% of the world's production when it's fully on line. Russia is expanding their own production, and India is starting to build helium extraction into their natural gas production lines.
The only thing that kept the big natural gas producers in the US from adding helium extraction equipment to their production stream was the artificially-low price mandated by the Federal helium reserve. Some US companies already have their extraction equipment in use, and others are starting to build them. It's not hard - basically 1920s tech.
you must be a democrat
"I'm cranky, off-topic, and immediately conclude people who aren't as dumb as me are a category of people I hate."
Is Ted Cruz on China's payroll or do they get this outcome for free?
That helium makes them all sound like Mickey Mouse.
is *through the planet core*. So far, we've hardly scratched the surface, so to speak. The vast riches beneath the crust are there for the taking.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Here's a Chemical and Engineering News article from last month about it.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i37/Helium-Headache.html
The problem isn't the amount of helium in the earth. It's the dislocation caused by the government selling it at an artificially low price for some years, thus undercutting building new refining capacity. This current mess that we just mostly avoided would have been from suddenly shutting off the government supply and causing a price/availability problem.
Full Disclosure: This effects me directly. I work with Dean Olson, the guy quoted in the article. Unavailability of helium (the price wasn't so bad, but it just wasn't available. i.e. The supplier says it costs N dollars a liter of liquid helium, but you need X liters, and we have one fourth that amount available.) kept a new NMR system here offline for some months, thus delaying a bunch of research (And of course, that has a knock on effect of increased cost down the line. You have to keep paying the salaries of the researchers while they wait and do something else.)
Hopefully we can get back to our usual form of governmental funding neurosis soon rather than reaching a new and interesting level of insanity.
supply side economics? That's your answer to this? Really? Man, way off topic.
(I've got the karma to burn)
I got nuthin
Or will hot air prevail on Capitol Hill? (Insert your methane joke here.)"
FTFY
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Hopefully they don't make the same mistake as the Army with their drone, and use a safe GPS signal that cannot be spoofed.
Although it's getting scarce, it's still very cheap.
I went out to buy a pound of helium, and they wound up paying me $50.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
We have competition among insurance companies who owe it to their stock holders to not pay the bills, and they have a large contingent of lawyers on call to make sure this is all legal. Problem with health is that it is too dam expensive. If actual PEOPLE and not third parties were paying for health care you might get some market forces involved. But this would mean that there would be some poor people who could not afford health care. Wahh. As the system currently works noone can afford health care.
When in the history of humanity have the poor ever had it as good as the rich. Market forces just allow the most people to get comparatively wealthy so that society as a whole can advance. The current system works great if you are a lawyer, head of the AMA (an anticompeitive trust), work for an insurance company, or a government oversight committee, but not so much if you are sick.
The good is the enemy of the best. Sometimes the best health care is that which you can afford. Today the United States is largely broke (unless u work for 1 of the above groups)
Once it is gone, it is irrevocably gone. We should be a LOT more careful with this resource.
of course they all reach agreement on Helium it's the one thing they all have in common, and they are full of GAS
Please... balloon gas is a mix of helium and air. It is this way so when people try to do there best chipmunks impersonation they dont suffocate, you know save the children and all.
Hindenburg was the first German passenger airship designed to use Helium as a lift gas (Helium lifts less per cubit foot than Hydrogen but is of course FAR safer) and this is why it has a very different profile from all but one of the other German zeps (LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin II was the other and also designed for Helium). Dr Eckener was negotiating with the US for the Helium to fill these two ships when the US (then the only source of significant quantities of Helium) got cold feet and worried that with Hitler running Germany these ships would be made into military platforms (made less vulnerable by the American lift gas). In the End, LZ-129 and LZ-130 both flew with Hydrogen (benefitting from the extra lift) and LZ-130 did indeed end-up flying as a military platform which Germany used to scout England and its defenses in the pre-WWII period before it was scrapped and its metal recycled into warplanes.
...is for ignorant morons to NOT read the details and instead glom onto left-wing shrieking headlines about some Republican "hating" something when he's actually trying to stop corrupt Democrat pork-barrel spending
Cruz was NOT "anti-Helium" and he was NOT "anti-national-park" or "anti-environment" ... He was against the President taking the Helium money and dumping it into a political slush fund.
It's depressing to see how easily geeks (who like to THINK they are intelligent) have been converted into mindless political drones who decide what's happening based on sources like TV comedy shows, and left-wing political sites that are partly funded by actual NAZI-collaborator George Soros. He's the only ACTUAL (as opposed to "Godwin's Law" nasty invalid assertion) Hitler-era NAZI collaborator I am aware of who not only never apologized, but has said he is proud of what he did, and has dedicated his billions to bringing national or international socialism to the US.
WAKE THE HELL UP!
I meant... helium
...Congress pumping out more hot air
definitely a democrat