Coming Next - Peak Helium - Washington University

[hatrack]

The element that lifts things like balloons, spirits and voice ranges is being depleted so rapidly in the world's largest reserve, outside of Amarillo, Texas, that supplies are expected to be depleted there within the next eight years. This deflates more than the Goodyear blimp and party favors. Its larger impact is on science and technology, according to Lee Sobotka, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

"Helium's use in science is extremely broad, but its most important use is as a coolant," said Sobotka, a specialist in nuclear chemistry and physics who collaborates with researchers at several national laboratories.

Generally the larger users of helium (He), such as the national laboratories, have the infrastructure to efficiently use and recycle helium, Sobotka said. The same cannot be said of many smaller scale users. Helium plays a role in nuclear magnetic resonance, mass spectroscopy, welding, fiber optics and computer microchip production, among other technological applications. NASA uses large amounts annually to pressurize space shuttle fuel tanks. "Helium is non-renewable and irreplaceable. Its properties are unique and unlike hydrocarbon fuels (natural gas or oil), there are no biosynthetic ways to make an alternative to helium. All should make better efforts to recycle it."

Drift away

The helium we have on Earth has been built up over billions of years from the decay of natural uranium and thorium. The decay of these elements proceeds at a super-snail's pace. For example, one of the most important isotopes for helium production is uranium-238. In the entire life span of the earth only half of the uranium-238 atoms have decayed (yielding eight helium atoms in the process) and an inconsequential fraction decay in about 1,000 years.

EDIT

http://www.enn.com/business/article/28495

[phantom power]

1. Is a super-snail slower than a regular snail, or faster?

[hatrack]

2. Kind of like "If you set out to fail, and succeed, what did you just do?"

:eyes:

[Zachstar]

3. Not good at all.

The space industry also uses alot of helium.

My god why is all this hitting humanity at once?

[phantom power]

4. Because for exponential behavior, everything recent dominates.

[eppur_se_muova]

7. i.e., it's the twenty-ninth day. nt

[Javaman]

5. And with the loss of helium, we also lose the ability to

talk like the chipmunks when we are really really drunk.

Oh the humanity!!!

[NNadir]

6. This is an extremely important issue. Almost all superconducting magnets use liquid helium.

It may prove possible in some cases to substitute liquid hydrogen for things like MRI, NMR and similar devices, but in spite of what Amory Lovins tells people at the level so as to buy his crapola, there is a corresponding risk associated with this.

I've seen this one coming for a long time.

Almost all the world's sources are in US gas fields. Uh oh.

One might reasonably ask whether one could get helium from decaying actinides, say, from used nuclear fuel.

If one had a metric ton of Cm-242 - not an easy task by any means - it would evolve only about 4 kg of helium per year, enough to fill a balloon with a 5 meter radius.

It ain't good.

[phantom power]

9. I know I've mentioned this before, but...

grocery stores literally give helium away to the kids (enclosed in rubber or mylar membranes, tied to strings).

Market forces are infallible!

[NNadir]

10. I think about that every time I see one of those balloons.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. So that "Helium Privatization Act of 1996" doesn't look so good in retrospect ...

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/Laws/PL104_273.asp

(note all to be sold off by 2015, not 2005, as stated in Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#History_of_extraction_and_use )