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Researchers Find Game-Changing Helium Reserve In Tanzania (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNN: Helium is an incredibly important element that is used in everything from party balloons to MRI machines -- it's even used for nuclear power. For many years, there have been global shortages of the element. For example, Tokyo Disneyland once had to suspend sales of its helium balloons due to the shortages. The shortages are expected to come to an end now that researchers from Oxford and Durham universities have discovered a "world-class" helium gas field in Tanzania's East African Rift Valley. They estimate that just one part of the reserve in Tanzania could be as large as 54 billion cubic feet (BCf), which is enough to fill more than 1.2 million medical MRI scanners. "To put this discovery into perspective, global consumption of helium is about 8 billion cubic feet (BCf) per year and the United States Federal Helium Reserve, which is the world's largest supplier, has a current reserve of just 24.2 BCf," said University of Oxford's Chris Ballentine, a professor with the Department of Earth Sciences. "Total known reserves in the USA are around 153 BCf. This is a game-changer for the future security of society's helium needs and similar finds in the future may not be far away," Ballentine added.
Mineshaft Gap
What about the huge reserves in Washington DC?
Why the f*ck are we still wasting this gas on such stupid things as party balloons. Why wasn't this completely verboten years ago.
Then stop pissing it away by undercharging and wasting it on frivolous shit like balloons!
Who's ready for another round of the Great Game? All the major players are there. Place your bets!
OK, it's a significant find, but "game changer"?
At the usage rate quoted, that means we run out in 25 years instead of 19.
Tell a patient with a terminal illness and 6 months to live that you found a "game changer". Then tell him, "Yep, you're going to live 6 1/2 months!"
I doubt the patient would agree with your "game changer" assessment.
Who does the math on these? How can adding less than 10 years to the global supply be a massive global game changer?
We are eating through this precious non-renewable resources at a crazy rate. And doing silly stuff with it like "Happy Birthday" balloons.
okay the 54Bcf was in "part of the reserve. Still it is a non-renewable resource that we should treat preciously and not capriciously.
Does that mean Britain, America, and their corporate friends are going to enslave Tanzania and exploit that nation's resources to it's absolutely fullest, leaving the local population far poorer and devastated before they arrived?
Or is Tanzania going to be the new center for helium, and all of Tanzania's resources go to enriching the local population who have a birthright to these resources, pulling Tanzania out of poverty?
I'm guessing big business, banks, and military is going to rape the shit out of Tanzania's resources and leave nothing for the people, business as usual.
Seriously, click bait much? Yes, it is a large find, but at 8 BCF/year it is about 6 or 7 years of supply, that is NOT a game changer for humanity, that is a game changer for the people that will make a fortune rationing it out until we run out of helium.
So, how do we convert this Helium into dollars in Americans' pockets? The important thing is that if any Tanzanian people get any money from this, it's only a few of them, or a tiny piece of the action (as mine employees).
Seems kind of dumb.
Comon man.. This is the media err.. Slashdot we are talking about... The headlines sell you know...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Up to now helium was found by chance when drilling for something else. This time they worked out a geological model of where to look, and sure enough they found a huge amount the first place they looked based on that model.
That's the "game changer", knowing where to look for helium.
The shortages are expected to come to an end
The inability of human beings to think in a term longer than a few months has always amazed me. This doesn't solve the problem, it merely postpones it. Helium escapes unless recaptured. If the rate of generation of helium from alpha decay is less than the rate of consumption, we will run out of helium one day - it's only a question of when.
It's also amazing that we could have a shortage of a material when there are giant balls full of the stuff in the sky. But hey, that's how the cosmos works.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That was hydrogen, you moron.
We're all playing tiddlywinks now!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Yea, nobody remembers that they fire bombed London using those Zeppelin things during WW1 and killed a bunch of people, at least on this side of the pond. Londoners tend to remember that and what happened to them during WW2. All we have is the B&W news reel footage of the incident in Lakehurst NJ and a simple little sign that shows where it took place because not that many Americans died.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That's going to be really useful once I finally win the lottery and buy an airship.
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
As soon as we get cost-effect fusion energy, we'll have all the helium we could want. Inhale all you want, we'll make more! Long term, I see no real need to stockpile helium.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Hydrogen, combined with a rather flammable paint scheme. Mythbusters did this. http://www.discovery.com/tv-sh...
No Helium involved, which if you'll remember your high school Chemistry class, is a Noble Gas (doesn't burn, doesn't react)
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
He seems to know a great deal more about it than you do. The Germans used hydrogen because the US had a monopoly on helium and wouldn't sell them any, thanks to their using zeppelins in WW1. Verstehen Sie?
Another reason we need fusion reactors.
I want dirigibles to be a common sight, now that we don't have as big a shortage, we can have blimps? please
Not a game changer.
Helium like any other rarer materials should be handled more careful.
> Nobody ever said Government was smart and foreword thinking about what it does. In fact, most thinking people understand that it's quite the opposite, government is usually stupid, slow, costly and inefficient, a set of traist that gets worse as government gets bigger.
I HOPE my government remains slow and inefficient. Holding public hearings, referendums, etc. is slow and inefficient. Giving the minority opinion a chance to speak their mind is slow and inefficient. It's much more faster and more efficient for a dictator to just declare government policy. Publishing proposed laws before for several days before they are voted on slows things down.
It took from 1993 to 2010, seventeen years, to pass HillaryCare. I like that way much better than the alternative, which can be seen in North Korea, Cuba, and Syria. They don't bother with transparency laws, public bidding on government contracts, etc. That stuff is inefficient.
... to overthrow the government of Tanzania for possessing weapons of mass destruction and exporting democracy.
I found it odd that the United States of America would be the only place with big Helium reserves on Earth. Looks like I was right. I guess it just shows how much drilling the United States has been subjected to.
Humanity can always mine Uranus or Neptune for Helium if it really has to.
What they mean is "We're gonna change the game animals in Tanzania to get at this resource."
There will never be a shortage of helium. Only a shortage of really cheap helium.
Helium is continuously produced by alpha decay of radioactive materials inside the earth. It exists in various concentrations in all natural gas reserves.
Some of those reserves (e.g. some wells in Texas or the one now found in Tanzania) have unusually high helium concentrations, making production costs much lower. The U.S. government used the Texas wells to set up a strategic reserve in the early to mid 20th century (when zeppelins were still a thing, and later for the space race).
Towards the end of the 20th century, it gradually sold this inventory into the market, effectively subsidizing it with tax paid by americans during the cold war. This created a disincentive for developing the capability of producing helium from lower grade sources. The uncertainty in the market raised prices, based on the perception of an impending shortage.
Without the Tanzania find, the increased price would have eventually convinced someone to invest in the infrastructure for separating helium from lower grade sources, eliminating the dependency on the chances of finding high grade sources.
Of course, if someone *had* done so, he would have been greatly disappointed by the Tanzania find reducing the price hurt the return on their investment. That's the risk of investing.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Hands off Europe and America!
The Hindenburg disaster was in 1937, there was no Kaiser. There was a hateful, little reichkanzler with a funny moustache.
-- Make America hate again!
As a geologist I have actually prospected for helium. The only reason there even appears to be a shortage, is that the US Government is still manipulating the price, and using an artificially low price to restrict the market. Natural gas fields are the major source of helium today, and many natural gas fields contain anywhere from a fraction of 1% to several percent helium. As helium is generated in the Earth by radioactive decay it migrates upward, often to be trapped in the same geologic structures that natural gas is trapped within. Gas shale reservoirs may be the only major gas reservoirs that do not contain much helium. Due to US Government controls on the helium reserve and the market, the price, and the supply have both not been a function of a true market. Federal dumping of National Helium Reserve stock into the market depressed the price of helium so much that it was being used as a cheap substitute for argon and other gases that have a much less limited supply. Now we have auctions, with a limited supply being sold, but still enough to destroy the market for new sources. Once the US Helium reserve is sold off, natural gas processors are likely to start capturing the helium they presently waste due to the economics of removing it from natural gas. Other countries have huge reserves as well, including Qatar 10.1 Billion cubic meters Algeria 8.2 Bcm Russia 6.8 Bcm Canada 2.0 Bcm China 1.1 Bcm And any country that produces natural gas has a potential addition to the supply. Sorry, but we will not be running out any time soon. It is true that once released to the atmosphere, helium will leave the planet, but if the price goes up enough, that waste is less likely to occur.
For a short 7 years if the reserve is all that it's cracked up to be and if consumption doesn't increase (ha! not a likely behaviour from our species).
Sucki it China!
"Conservatives" really like to fuck with laws around that.
There were still people going to jail for that when I started university. Many of the "conservatives" pushing various bedroom red tape are much older than I am.
"New High-Grade Helium Discoveries in Tanzania"
There's a datum for those who were debating the level of purity that is necessary for economical recovery and purification.
The comment about "serendipitous discovery" on the back of petroleum is ... interesting. Since there certainly is exploration work going on in the area (what can I say that's in the public domain? Well, this conference was very worth attending.) But when they finish their abstract with this :
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code and said it looked all good - by Coren22
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NOT a secretary!
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won't demonstrate security of his product be exposing the source - by Coren22 (1625475)
57 antiviruses show different https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/
MalwareBytes' employee hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download
* EAT YOUR WORDS Coren22
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P.S.=> See subject - & remember a lesson Google had w/ Chrome above (even gov't.'s not opening all their code & same reason https://slashdot.org/submission/5780853/dhs-walks-back-comments-on-feds-open-source-policy OR what security pros see too https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2016/04/28/attackers-use-open-source/ )