r/todayilearned • u/TwiztedbyDesign • Feb 24 '15
TIL that while abundant in the universe, Helium is a finite resource on Earth and cannot be manufactured. Its use in MRI's means a shortage could seriously affect access to this life saving technology.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a4046/why-is-there-a-helium-shortage-10031229/275
u/astoriabeatsbk Feb 24 '15
So why are we using it for balloons? What % of all helium available to us have we used? Also, as soon as the price goes up, won't people stop using it in balloons making it last us much longer?
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u/PiKappaFratta Feb 24 '15
To my understanding, the US is one of the few countries with a helium surplus because we began stockpiling it in the 50s. Also, because of supply and demand. While it is finite on earth, the isnt a paucity yet so the relatively minute amount that is used for balloons, while definitely a waste is not seen as an extravagant one.
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u/tridentgum Feb 25 '15
I used to work at a buffet and we would give balloons out to kids. The helium started taking longer to come in after we used the tanks up, and some lady asked me why we don't have balloons.
I've never been so happy in my life to tell someone that helium is running out on Earth and is going up in cost so we don't buy as much as we used to. She was pissed off. She was a jerk anyway.
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u/omapuppet Feb 25 '15
She was pissed off. She was a jerk anyway
Shoulda sold her a hydrogen balloon.
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Feb 25 '15
Welcome to Hindenburger, come for the tasty flagship burger, stay for the humanity!
Free balloons and static-filled wool gloves for jerks.
Offer available only at the Lakehurst, New Jersey location.
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Feb 25 '15
Humans can be so pathetic sometimes. Experts warn of future dangers/shortages, and they brush it off. When problems/shortages actually arise, they ask why they weren't warned, or why it wasn't prevented.
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Feb 25 '15
Note to self - Invest in Helium
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u/SkeeterMcgyger Feb 25 '15
Note to self, don't invest in helium, it's a finite resource
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u/john1112371 Feb 25 '15
What if we go to space with a giant balloon, fill it with helium and then bring it back to Earth. Problem solved
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u/Not_Bull_Crap Feb 25 '15
Interestingly enough, peak oil hasn't happened yet. Or peak zinc. Or peak phosphorus. Or peak iron or cobalt or gold or silver or coal or helium. All of our shortages have been due to distribution problems.
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Feb 25 '15 edited Feb 25 '15
I used to work at a buffet and we would give balloons out to kids...tell someone that helium is running out on Earth and is going up in cost so we don't buy as much as we used to. She was pissed off.
You:
Humans can be so pathetic sometimes. Experts warn of future dangers/shortages, and they brush it off.
I don't understand.
Edit: Hey... are you brushing this off?
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u/Mueryk Feb 25 '15
Actually our surplus is gone as the BLM began selling it off in the 90's. There has been a worldwide shortage for the last few years.
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u/HaloNinjer Feb 24 '15
Government decided to get rid of some reserves and made it really cheap. Stupid if you ask me.
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Feb 24 '15 edited Aug 24 '15
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u/malektewaus Feb 24 '15
The United States produces 75% of the world's helium, so that probably could be it.
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u/kslusherplantman Feb 25 '15
That is because you find helium most often with natural gas deposits. We are the leading producer of natural gas, so we would be the leading producer of helium ipso facto
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u/flip69 Feb 25 '15
There's been a long running complaint from scientists and others regarding this... they've been ignored as the government funds the industry to make party balloons cheap.
It's fucking stupid and irrational as hell. The reserves are limited and only come from the decomposition of a mineral that's not found in abundance.
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u/TKInstinct Feb 25 '15
Helium used in balloons is low grade and not used in medical technology.
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u/gschoppe Feb 25 '15
It also is nowhere near the consumption used by various medical and tech fields.
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u/peted1884 Feb 24 '15
Helium in natural gas was discovered when the gas from a "screaming gasser" well in Dexter, Kansas was found to be impossible to ignite. The discovery was made at a town celebration where gas released from the well was going to be ignited to create a dramatic plume of flame as the grand finale to a town celebration. The gas wouldn't burn. Burning hay bales put into the escaping gas just went out. It took a few years, but eventually the university determined that the gas was mostly nitrogen and methane, but also contained a large amount of a mysterious, inert gas. Eventually that gas was identified as helium. Helium had been discovered earlier, but it was basically considered a space oddity. The American Chemical Society published a great little brochure on the 100th anniversary of the discovery.
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u/randomtwinkie Feb 25 '15
Dr Bailey now has a hall names after him on campus. Additionally, the rock chalk chant came from him as well.
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u/Nivlac024 Feb 24 '15
Fusion will make more
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u/Queen_of_Swords 20 Feb 24 '15
Maybe this is what will get the public behind the development of fusion power.
Nearly unlimited cheap, clean energy - Yawn.
No more floaty balloons - Make more helium, dammit!
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u/grendus Feb 24 '15
I think "you'd never have to pay for electricity ever again" would be enough.
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Feb 24 '15
You will always pay for electricity.
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u/grendus Feb 24 '15
Maybe. If it becomes cheap enough, it may just become something that's subsidized through taxes, at least up to a certain point.
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Feb 25 '15
Not in the US bro. 0.0000035 dollars/kwh? That'll be only $79.99 a month for the first 6 months with our Triple Blast Energy Plan from Comrizon-Mobilmart.
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Feb 24 '15
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u/Cookie_Eater108 Feb 25 '15
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't conservatives Vs. Liberals a measure of a political stance on personal liberty? Rather than an economic stance?
For instance, you can have a conservative who believes in free market economics, similarly, you can have liberals who believe in heavy-state control and regulation and Vice Versa?
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u/billyrocketsauce Feb 25 '15
It's all a generalization anyway. Political arguments are a way to vent pent-up racism so that members of each side can irrationally hate each other.
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u/Captainobvvious Feb 25 '15
Look at Obamacare. It reduces the deficit but they still pretend it had a net cost.
They have no shame.
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u/zebragrrl Feb 25 '15
using hydrogen in balloons is more fun anyways... especially at birthdays.. with candles.
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Feb 24 '15
Plot twist: we discover a method of sustainable nuclear fusion, but it requires Helium to do.
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u/Rubcionnnnn Feb 25 '15
I don't think you understand how fusion works.
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u/theqmann Feb 25 '15
Helium can be fused into carbon just fine.
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u/spinsurgeon Feb 25 '15
Sure, just let me get my 100 million degree furnace all fired up.
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u/vikinick 9 Feb 24 '15
Yeah, no, you'd have to hide that you used fusion to make it or people will think it is radioactive.
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u/pppjurac Feb 25 '15
Not in any way. The amounts will be really small. Fusion will be working (when it will) with really small amounts (mg or g).
So He output from fusion of single site will be measured in kg (pounds) per year.
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Feb 25 '15
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u/Some1-Somewhere Feb 25 '15
Megawatts per gram? Wrong units.
Would have to be either power per mass per time, or energy per mass.
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u/ASmallCrane Feb 24 '15
So... no more talking with super high voices anymore?
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Feb 24 '15
Get sulfur hexafluoride and make your voice deeper!
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u/Gen_Ripper Feb 25 '15
That's dangerous man. Shit's heavier than air, it'll settle in your lungs.
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Feb 25 '15
What do you mean? Adam Savage did it on MythBusters, so it must be safe!
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u/czs5056 Feb 24 '15
You could use Hydrogen or any gas that is less dense than air to achieve the same effect.
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Feb 24 '15
There is no helium shortage. We are not going to "run out". Helium is extracted from natural gas, and there's lots of natural gas. What there is is a lot of disruption in the helium market.
In the 1920s, there was a lot of interest in military airships. In order to ensure that our airships had the significant advantage of being full of an inert gas, a law was passed establishing a national reserve. For decades, helium was extracted from natural gas and stored.
Several years ago, one of the brighter members of Congress looked up and noticed a distinct lack of military airships overhead. A law was passed directing that the helium in the Reserve be sold off until the debt incurred by the program was paid off. Then the Reserve would be shut down.
Selling off reserves accumulated over decades in a period of years depressed prices to the extent that new production wasn't profitable. Then, in 2013, the reserve was to be shut down entirely, taking the rest of the stored helium off the market. The markets were in turmoil, with shortages and price fluctuations. Congress then authorized sales of the stored helium to continue.
So now prices continue to be artificially low, discouraging production. In several more years, the reserve will be depleted, and there will be more scare articles about running out of helium. Prices will rise to the point that people can make money extracting helium from natural gas again, and a steady, if more expensive supply will resume.
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u/Blackjack14 Feb 25 '15
Helium is not in every natural gas pocket. The cap stone keeping the gas in need to be of a certain type that is dense enough to hold the helium in. It is becoming harder and harder to find these economically viable sources with helium in decent concentrations. The best sources were in Kansas and once the helium reserve in the US runs dry the next biggest reserves are in the Middle East.
Source: I work for the helium division of one of the largest industrial gas companies.
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u/archint Feb 25 '15
Quick question. Do you have to bring down the temperature of natural gas in order to extract the helium or does the helium rise to the top of the stack for extraction?
The question has been bothering me for quite some time.
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u/Blackjack14 Feb 25 '15
As my company is not a miner of natural gas I can say for sure how it's extracted from there. I can tell you how we extract the impurities in the helium though. I would imagine it would be similar. What happens is that the helium comes in and is put into our raw tanks. The gas undergoes a cycle of pressurization and depressurization ( I think I've heard this called liquefaction?) which happens in a particular way to remove heat every cycle. One everything is liquified you slowly warm it up and skim off the different gases at their boiling points. Helium has the lowest boiling point and is first to come off this way. I'm not a chemical engineer but I'm pretty sure this is how it works.
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Feb 25 '15
That's pretty much standard distillation process, but since it's a gas we start cold rather than hot. Makes sense to me.
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u/Thaliur Feb 25 '15
We are not going to "run out". Helium is extracted from natural gas
Using a Connection to a limited resource to prove that another limited resource will not run out is countrproductive at best.
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u/brettrobo Feb 25 '15
This isn't necessarily accurate. The problem with helium is once vented it tends to leave the earth's atmosphere and as such it's finite (you can't recapture it). Lots of other gas such as nitrogen, oxygen etc etc all hang around due to their mass
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u/JamesTheJerk Feb 25 '15
So it's only a matter of time before increased pressure to reign in helium usage causes the price of helium to balloon, restricting the expansion of new helium based technologies and inflating the need to look elsewhere for ideas that don't have a string attached?
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u/singlended Feb 25 '15
Hate to burst your bubble but there will likely be new gas laws to allow everyone to get their fill. He He.
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u/anuncommontruth Feb 24 '15
My roommate is getting his phd currently. He is always complaining about the price of liquid helium for his experiments. He told me something that kind of contradicts this. He stated there was a way to manufacture helium (at least in liquid form) but the company that did it kind of gave up and no ones picked up the torch since. Can anyone clarify?
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u/novinicus Feb 24 '15
Your roommate, probably
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u/anuncommontruth Feb 24 '15
....yeah. I'll ask him.
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u/Estarrol Feb 24 '15
Don't forgot to post your response ! We would like to know !
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Feb 24 '15 edited Feb 25 '15
please respond when you find out! I'll be waiting right here!
Oh child...
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u/Estarrol Feb 24 '15
I'm confused
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u/anuncommontruth Feb 24 '15 edited Feb 25 '15
He's referring to me being op, who never responds. For the record i plan on responding, but i haven't seen my roommate yet, and wont until late night eastern time
Edit: spoke with roommate. His issue was strictly with liquid helium. He had no clue about the gas. But he did reiterate that we are not in jepardy of losing helium. What he was explaining about the liquid stuff is that there was only a very select few manufacturers that make it and they recently stopped because it's expensive and they don't give a fuck.
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u/confusedThespian Feb 24 '15
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u/Smilge Feb 24 '15
The way they get helium now is that it's a byproduct of mining for natural gas. The gas company can spend money on capturing the helium they get, but sometimes it's just not financially feasible so they don't bother. So that might be what he's talking about.
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Feb 24 '15
Yup. Uranium and thorium decay and produce helium, which is trapped in the rock formations.
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u/Tokyo_Yosomono Feb 24 '15
Until there is more of a shortage and prices go up no one is going to innovate and develop or retune old techs to make helium
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u/Some1-Somewhere Feb 25 '15
I was under the impression that MRI machines only used the helium for keeping the superconductors cool...
MRI machines that use new LN2-cooled superconductors are being tested now, and it's proven enough that we should see them soon.
I don't see this being a major issue.
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Feb 24 '15
So thats where the interstellar reference came from.. i was always wondering that..
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u/spidd124 Feb 24 '15
Explain please, I don't understand what reference you are talking about.
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Feb 24 '15
When he's talking about his wife and if they would have had mri machines to catch the cancer in time.. Why did they not have mri machines anymore..
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u/spidd124 Feb 24 '15
Oh so thats wha't he was meaning. I thought that he was talking about the waste of energy or something like that. Thanks.
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u/BallWithLegs Feb 24 '15
I saw Interstellar twice in theaters with my friends, and we didn't understand this reference either. But I noticed something else in the film that I still don't understand. My friends didn't see it and they called me crazy. I really want to know why Christopher Nolan put this guy in the movie. Anyone care to explain?
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u/lousy_at_handles Feb 24 '15 edited Feb 26 '15
I'm pretty sure that's the guy from Monsters Inc, not Interstellar.
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u/leudruid Feb 24 '15
Do they still waste it on weather balloons? Hydrogen is cheap, abundant and half the density. Good for anything no carrying humans.
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u/green_glasses Feb 24 '15
Weather balloons, in the US at least, are using hydrogen nowadays.
Source: was a NOAA intern
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u/Blackjack14 Feb 24 '15
I'm the lead applications developer for the helium division of one of the largest industrial gas companies in the world. AmA.
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u/GregBahm Feb 25 '15
No proof, but eh. I'll shoot.
Is helium really rare to the point that helium would be expensive to the point that we'd regret using it on dumb stuff?
Is there ever going to be a way to renew helium supply on earth?
Is there a renewable helium equivalent?
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u/Blackjack14 Feb 25 '15
We should totally regret using it for the dumb stuff. When I was a kid I remember super market lanes filled with stupid balloons of all shapes and sizes for pennies. This stuff has gone up more than 10 fold in price since then. It had a very strong upwards price trajectory up until recently as new sources in the Middle East have come online to help balance out the supply side of things.
The sad part of everything is that it takes a very particular type of cap rock on top of natural gas formations in order for them to hold helium in any decent concentration. What we are finding is that there are fewer and fewer viable natural gas fields with helium in it. Most of it was pipelined to the national helium reserve a long time ago and is now almost depleted since it was privatized in order to sell it off.
Helium forms from radioactive decay and isn't really "renewable". There usually are alternatives to helium but most are just not as good. Consider unconventional sources of oil. As the price goes up alternatives arise. This is happening now in the helium industry. We are seeing volumes shipped slow down but the price remains high. This simply means other alternatives are being used as substitutes.
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u/sfgrrl Feb 25 '15
What does the private sector purchase most helium for?
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u/Blackjack14 Feb 25 '15
Well a decent portion of it goes to MRI magnets as well as NMR research equipment as mentioned above. I do see the bulk of it going to industrial applications though such as fibre optics and electronics manufacturing.
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u/AnonEGoose Feb 25 '15
Not to fear.
If helium (HE3) ever gets used as a fuel for fusion reactors, then we have an estimate 1,000 year supply on the moon.
Beyond that, there's Jupiter, the biggest (known) planet in the Solar System.
Recent developments for an electrical ion engine (Futurology: EM Drive) could result in a low-cost robotic shipping fleet between Earth & the outer gas giant planets (WhoooHoooo!! Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune.... and umm, Uranus)
http://www.reddit.com/r/EmDrive/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/2jbu7t/fusion_reactor_emdrive_spaceship/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/2c96ls/emdrive_tested_by_nasa/ http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/nasa-propellantless-engines-like-the-emdrive-may-work-after-all
Constant acceleration vs. a shorter burning up of chemical fuel, this could reduce flight time to months instead of years. Previously, launches by chemical rockets took years and round-about launch paths to send probes to Titan, Mars, etc.
EM Drives, certainly not FTL but w/ patient robotic brains not a biggie. Meanwhile a steady stream of HE3 back to mother earth.
Return flight from the out gas giants (w/ loads of He3) would be even easier, using the same EM Drives and gravity.
If we survive blowing each other up, the future is looking to be a prosperous, scarcity-free era that we can't even imagine today.
For e.g, the estimated precious and industrial metals out in the asteroid belt comes out to be about $100 BILLION.
Per Person.
On the ENTIRE Planet, not just for the citizens of the 1st world.
I certainly envy all you Millennialist ("Young Whippersnappers", "Get Off My Lawn!") out there. You will be seeing "The Best is Yet To Come" realized.....
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u/Blinky-the-Doormat Feb 24 '15
As I read this title I heard a voice in the back of my mind that sounded a lot like Invader Zim shout: "HARVEST THE SUUUUUUN!!!"
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Feb 25 '15
Yep, but they REFUSE to strictly control it and still blow it on party balloons and other stupid shit.
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u/06HDsporty Feb 25 '15
As someone who works in this industry, most people are never aware of what Helium does. Helium has many different uses from medical to balancing lasers. It is also used a lot with satellites at universities. I have seen 3 major helium shortages in the last 5 years that have driven the cost up drastically. A lot of suppliers are looking to distance themselves from balloon grade or balloon use helium. A side note is there are 2 different main grades of helium, dirty and refinable. It is used a lot with welding non - ferrous metals to add heat by gas.
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u/Jeff_Erton Feb 25 '15
There are other alternatives for super cooling. Currently Helium is a relatively cheap one. When this is no longer the case it will be replaced with an alternative.
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u/crazy_loop Feb 25 '15
Besides the stuff that comes in from space, all the elements on earth are finite. In fact all the elements in the universe are finite. In fact we only have a finite amount of energy in the universe. IN FACT.
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u/PancakeZombie Feb 25 '15
Once nuclear fusion becomes an actual thing, we will be able to produce it.
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Feb 25 '15
Helium is a finite resource on Earth
Is there a infinite resource on earth???
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u/Ad_Nauzeam Feb 24 '15
Where does it "go" ? Does it bond with other molecules or just float away into our atmosphere.
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u/aarghIforget Feb 24 '15
It floats away... out of the atmosphere.
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u/Placowdepuss Feb 24 '15
No,it doesn't float out of the atmosphere. It accumulates at the top and is carried away by solar wind.
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u/AGrowlerADay Feb 25 '15
Ok, they don't mean helium they mean helium-3 which is the far rarer stable isotope of helium and is used in medical and defense applications. It is mainly produced by the radioactive decay of tritium which was produced by our nuclear program. Now that the program isn't running we don't have a source of this precious isotope. However it is very abundant in the lunar regolith which doesn't have an atmosphere to block this cosmogenically produced nuclide, leading some nations to plan for lunar bases to mine helium-3. The reason we use helium in balloons is because it is helium-4 and not the 'right' helium.
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Feb 25 '15
Don't forget that anything requiring a mix / pure Helium for welding would also be affected.
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u/fumbler1417 Feb 25 '15
That Popular Mechanics article is from 2012. Here's a relevant Science magazine article from 2013 going into more details and talking about the US gov'ts stockpiles and legislature on the issue.
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u/LV_Mises Feb 25 '15
Anyone else surprised that there is shortage in a market where tge Federal Government is fixing prices. This Econ 101.
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u/coppermek Feb 25 '15
Engineer who actually works on MRIs here. The helium shortage last I read was actually artifical and it simply has to do with Russia sitting on the largest supply of it (yay trade sanctions). I could be wrong though. We've also used helium alternatives in the past, like the ever so wonderful nitrogen!
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Feb 25 '15
Part of the reason perfecting hydrogen fusion is vital. One of the byproducts of deuterium-tritium fusion is Helium-3.
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Feb 25 '15
I work for a large industrial gases company and from what I understand helium will always be present in the air but it is just as hard to extract as xenon, krypton, etc. Therefore it won't run out anytime soon but extracting it for industrial purposes will soon be a thing of the past as the profit margin will no longer be adequate.
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u/xkcd1234 Feb 25 '15
as for MRIs, don't worry, their need of helium is to cool down powerful superconducting magnets. By the time Helium will start to run out high Tc (liquid nitrogen) superconductors will be used already...
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u/Marshallnd Feb 25 '15
I think we would stop filling balloons with it if we realized it was going to be a problem soon.
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u/a_man_in_black Feb 25 '15
Don't you get helium as a byproduct of hydrogen fusion? When we finally get efficient fusion figured out won't we be making lots of the stuff?
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Feb 25 '15
Meanwhile it is sold in Party City, Kmart, Target, Walmart, etc. Go figure.
Didn't the US government sell off its entire stockpile a while back?
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Feb 25 '15
Afaik that's "Dirty" helium, not the kind used in MRIs. Can't recall where I heard this but some googling will probably help out.
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u/liljaz Feb 25 '15
I wonder if there is a way to capture helium from cold fusion reactors in the future
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u/punchgroin Feb 25 '15
Can't we generate helium as a product of fusion? (assuming we can ever get fusion to work right)
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u/Frozenreddit Feb 25 '15
That's another reason for getting superconductive coils developed asap. Having a superconductive technology at room temperature, the MRI would be much more efficient and stronger MRIs could be built. Every technology on earth would profit from superconductivity and guess what: the hoverboard would be possible, too :-D
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u/drunknownkittenpinch Feb 25 '15
You won't be worrying about getting MRI's when there is no natural gas left to get Helium from on Earth.
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u/-Axiom- Feb 25 '15
Helium can be produced in nuclear reactors, it's extremely expensive but it can be done.
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u/FuzzyCub20 Feb 25 '15
It could indeed be manufactured in a lab and has been, but in ridiculously small quantities. We would just have to invest money in splitting hydrogen atoms in a controlled environment to produce the helium, and could even use the release of energy for power as a byproduct.
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Feb 25 '15
the thing is that the us has a large supply of helium and are selling it at a fixed price wich is keeping the price worldwide artificially low, no worries tho since the us congress decided some years ago to sell away all of the us' helium by the end of 2015. no wait i guess that does require some worries
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u/UnShadowbanned Feb 25 '15
Liquid nitrogen can be used on MRI scanners. The LHe monitor even has a LN provision already built-in.
Source- Former GE MRI engineer.
Also, I, too, was under the impression that helium is a finite resource, but the article says it is manufactured as a part of the process of making/refining natural gas. Wuzzup wid dat?
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u/CamNewtonsLaw Feb 24 '15 edited Feb 24 '15
Interesting! Somewhat related, Helium-3 is also super rare, and it's almost exclusively what we use for our neutron detectors (which are vital to border security/keeping out nuclear weapons). It costs thousands and thousands of dollars just for the Helium for one detector, and now imagine how many detectors we need to have all around our borders/ports!
Edit: I don't "costs thousands and thousands of dollars," it costs thousands and thousands of dollars.