If you think all helium does is make you sound like Donald Duck, pay attention. MRI machines, solar telescopes and even nuclear reactors are significant places where helium is used for proper function and maintenance. Sadly, most people only know that it is great for filling birthday balloons, so long as it’s cheap. According to The Independent, helium supplies are on the wane, which will likely cause a price spike. Helium, gentle readers, is on the way out.
The situation without having helium
In 1996, Congress voted in favor of the Helium Privatization Act – and America’s supply has dwindled at a high rate of speed ever since. Because it’s so cheap to obtain helium, supplies have depleted at an alarming rate. The 1996 law also demands that all the helium within the United States of America National Helium Reserve near Amarillo, Texas, be sold by 2015, regardless of market price. Similar circumstances exist worldwide for helium, making it seem as though humanity wants to cut off its nose to spite its face.
What is the big trouble with no helium?
Cooling MRI machines with liquid helium are customary in hospitals for some time. Terrorists are tracked via radiation-powered devices that require helium for operation. If that’s not significant enough, nuclear facilities need helium-3 isotopes for safe operation. Wind tunnels require garden variety helium. Helium is good for safely cleaning rocket fuel tanks, which NASA loves. All of this, plus festive birthday balloons, might be gone in 25 to 30 years, according to experts surveyed by The Independent.
Professor Robert Richardson of Cornell University told The Independent that “Once helium is released into the atmosphere within the form of party balloons or boiling helium, it is lost to the Earth forever.” He’s a Nobel laureate, so possibly those who think helium is not significant should listen.
Helium: From where do you hail?
The Sun’s nuclear fusion creates helium as a by-product. Not only that, however the radioactive decay of various rocks produces helium on Earth. We get helium from the rocks. It can’t be created in any artificial fashion. Waiting around for natural processes to produce more helium will take billions of years, so that option is off the table.
Imagining a $ 100 balloon
Prof. Richardson sees the gravity of the helium situation, and suggests that prices be raised to slow the depletion. If a standard 15 cubic foot dispenser of helium went for $40 in 2009, today it should be as much as 50 times more expensive. Thus, expect that a helium-filled Mylar balloon could cost as much as $ 100. There’s no other way.
Additional reading
Helium Privatization Act
helium.com/items/874929-understanding-the-helium-privitization-act-of-1996
The Independent
independent.co.uk/news/science/why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html
University of Denver study on helium
mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/helium.htm
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