Helium Crisis Approaching 501
vrmlguy writes "Within nine years the National Helium Reserve will be depleted, according to an article in Science Daily. It quotes Dr. Lee Sobotka, of Washington University in St. Louis: '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.' (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a local article with quotes from Dr. Sobotka and representatives of the balloon industry.) On Earth, Helium is found mixed with natural gas, but few producers capture it. Extracting it from the atmosphere is not cost-effective. The US created a stockpile, the National Helium Reserve, in 1925 for use by military dirigibles, but stopped stockpiling it in 1995 as a cost-saving measure."
Funny thing (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, folks, helium is looked at for a number of important uses esp nuclear power, medical, and welding.
Re:Increase public awareness (Score:5, Informative)
According to wikipedia the applications of helium
* Because it is lighter than air, airships and balloons are inflated with helium for lift. In airships, helium is preferred over hydrogen because it is not flammable and has 92.64% of the buoyancy (or lifting power) of the alternative hydrogen (see calculation.)
* For its low solubility in water, the major part of human blood, air mixtures of helium with oxygen and nitrogen (Trimix), with oxygen only (Heliox), with common air (heliair), and with hydrogen and oxygen (hydreliox), are used in deep-sea breathing systems to reduce the high-pressure risk of nitrogen narcosis, decompression sickness, and oxygen toxicity.
* At extremely low temperatures, liquid helium is used to cool certain metals to produce superconductivity, such as in superconducting magnets used in magnetic resonance imaging. Helium at low temperatures is also used in cryogenics.
* For its inertness and high thermal conductivity, neutron transparency, and because it does not form radioactive isotopes under reactor conditions, helium is used as a coolant in some nuclear reactors, such as pebble-bed reactors.
* Helium is used as a shielding gas in arc welding processes on materials that are contaminated easily by air. It is especially useful in overhead welding, because it is lighter than air and thus floats, whereas other shielding gases sink.
* Because it is inert, helium is used as a protective gas in growing silicon and germanium crystals, in titanium and zirconium production, in gas chromatography, and as an atmosphere for protecting historical documents. This property also makes it useful in supersonic wind tunnels.
* In rocketry, helium is used as an ullage medium to displace fuel and oxidizers in storage tanks and to condense hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel. It is also used to purge fuel and oxidizer from ground support equipment prior to launch and to pre-cool liquid hydrogen in space vehicles. For example, the Saturn V booster used in the Apollo program needed about 13 million cubic feet (370,000 m) of helium to launch.[2]
* The gain medium of the helium-neon laser is a mixture of helium and neon.
* Because it diffuses through solids at a rate three times that of air, helium is used as a tracer gas to detect leaks in high-vacuum equipment and high-pressure containers, as well as in other applications with less stringent requirements such as heat exchangers, valves, gas panels, etc.
* Because of its extremely low index of refraction, the use of helium reduces the distorting effects of temperature variations in the space between lenses in some telescopes.
* The age of rocks and minerals that contain uranium and thorium, radioactive elements that emit helium nuclei called alpha particles, can be discovered by measuring the level of helium with a process known as helium dating.
* The high thermal conductivity and sound velocity of helium is also desirable in thermoacoustic refrigeration. The inertness of helium adds to the environmental advantage of this technology over conventional refrigeration systems which may contribute to ozone depleting and global warming effects.
* Because helium alone is less dense than atmospheric air, it will change the timbre (not pitch[12]) of a person's voice when inhaled. However, inhaling it from a typical commercial source, such as that used to fill balloons, can be dangerous due to the risk of asphyxiation from lack of oxygen, and the number of contaminants that may be present. These could include trace amounts of other gases, in addition to aerosolized lubricating oil.
Maybe I'm missing the usefulness of some of those but it doesn't seem like a big deal.
scavenging (Score:5, Informative)
This may be a pretty damn cool use for bio-science too, as I seem to remember articles about modified plants that could be placed about areas such as garbage dumps etc and absorb various metallic minerals from the ground. Maybe one day we'll see people growing trees of copper and aluminum over previous landfills, leeching bits of once-discarded waste metals from the ground.
I wouldn't say that the lack of raw materials shouldn't be a concern, but in the perhaps it will actually force society to view such things as less "disposable" and further the science and industry of re-use in the future.
Re:Increase public awareness (Score:2, Informative)
>* At extremely low temperatures, liquid helium is used to cool certain metals to produce superconductivity, such as in superconducting magnets used in magnetic resonance imaging. >Helium at low temperatures is also used in cryogenics.
Aside from all the scientific experiments that need the helium for cooling, I wonder how you could consider magnetic resonance imaging [wikipedia.org] as not being important.
Re:Cost effective? (Score:2, Informative)
Pretty much impossible (unless we get nuclear fusion working). Helium's not just some compound we can synthesize like oil or natural gas, it's an element like gold. And last I checked the alchemists didn't have much success at creating gold.
Re:Cost effective? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is a capitalist economy (Score:2, Informative)
You want the gerundivum, not the participium.
Re:Cost effective? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where's the problem? (Score:5, Informative)
One cannot "mine" helium. It comes dominantly from radioactive decay in the earth of Uranium and its decay products. But because it is so light, it generally leaks out of the ground, and escapes. Also because it is so light, it is not retained in the earth's atmosphere at all, and leaks into space (at which point it is irretrievable). Our supply right now comes from radioactive decay (over the last 5 billion years) which produced helium that accidentally got trapped in the earth (mostly in the same underground reservoirs as oil -- it is mixed in with natural gas). The half-life of Uranium is about 4.5 billion years, so the Helium is produced very slowly.
The problem is that it has widespread industrial and scientific uses, and its loss will have a severe impact on our science and industry. In particular it is used as a coolant (gets down to about 4K, and is the best way to get things to that temperature). Also it is used in any application requiring high field superconducting magnets. The fancy new High-T_c magnets generally cannot support large fields, so in fields like particle physics which require big magnets, they generally use simpler materials (e.g. Niobium-Titanium for the main LHC magnets [physicsworld.com]) that only superconduct at temperatures much lower than the liquid Nitrogen boiling point.
-- Bob
Some information about helium (Score:5, Informative)
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/helium/ [usgs.gov]
You can buy helium from the US government at $2.037 per cubic metre, whilst the commercial price is nearer $3 per cubic metre; adjusting that would seem to make some kind of sense, since the US has 600 million cubic metres of the stuff in Amarillo.
There are plants at Skikda in Algeria and somewhere in Qatar which aim to extract 25 million cubic metres from natural gas a year, but there have been some issues in getting them to work; both Algeria and Qatar's natural gas reserves contain about as much helium as the US total reserves do.
It is impossible to substitute for helium for cryogenics; nothing else stays liquid at that low a temperature, and the ultra-refrigerators that get to liquid helium temperatures use helium as working fluid.
I did my PhD at Nottingham University, which uses a fair amount of liquid helium; the arrangement there is that it's delivered to the MRI building at the top of the hill, and the boil-off passes through a liquifier and is used by the theoretical physicists at the bottom of the hill. I don't know what the theoretical physicists do with their boil-off; there are obvious practical problems with running piping from lots of separate labs to a central liquifier, and liquifiers are bulky and vibrating enough that you don't want to have them in the same lab as your delicate semiconductor-physics experiment.
Re:No more helium? (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, whereas helium is less dense than air and thus raises your voice pitch, sulfur hexafluoride is more dense than air and thus lowers your voice pitch.
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re:Time to ramp up fusion research (Score:5, Informative)
That's not really practical. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that a fusion reactor can convert 10% of the power from its reaction to electricity.
The most promising reaction, according to Wikipedia, is that of:
First of all, there is the Deuterium. This is harvested from Heavy Water, water that has one or two deuterium atoms instead of normal hydrogen atoms. This heavy water costs approximately US$300/kg[2] for consumers, and the deuterium produced approximately US$1/L[3]. This is a lot. Deuterium has a molar mass of approximately two g/mol, with one mole of a gas taking up one cubic metre at standard temperature/pressure. At US$1/L, this deuterium costs US$1000/m^3, or US$500/g (I'm assuming that gases volumes refer to STP. If I'm wrong, feel free to point this out---I've never dealt with bottled gas).
Next is tritium. At US$30000/g[4], it's hardly cheap. For the reaction to take place, you need the two isotopes to react stoichiometrically (in the proper ratio). IOW, for each mole of tritium, you need a mole of deuterium. Converted to masses (tritium's molar mass is approximately three), this means that you need a ratio of 3g tritium : 2g deuterium. For each mole of Tritium, you will get a mole of helium. Because we're dealing with helium-4, the molar mass is ~4g/mol. The rest of the mass is made up by the neutron; this doesn't matter to us. Therefore, to make four grams of helium, we need three grams of tritium, and two grams of deuterium. At the prices given, this is US$91000 per four grams of helium, which, because it is one mole, is one cubic metre at STP. Helium, as of 1986 (yeah, yeah, I know) cost US$37.50/1000f^3. This is about US$1.30/m^3. Think about those prices. 9.1 x 10^4 US$/m^3, vs 1.3 x 10^0 US$/m^3. That's almost five orders of magnitude. There would have to be be a bloody good reason to be using helium at those prices.
In conclusion:
Helium-4 produced by fusion will cost five orders of magnitude more than current prices
References:
Nuclear fusion is an absurdly poor source of He (Score:5, Informative)
The fusion of 1kg of deuterium produces near enough 1kg of helium, and, umm, 2.7MeV per fusion * 6*10^23 atoms per mole * 500 moles of D atoms per kilogram / 2 deuteriums per fusion * 1.6e-19 joules per eV = 64.8 terajoules of energy.
So, a one-gigawatt fusion power plant would produce a kilo of helium every eighteen days; if the current electricity use of France were provided entirely by fusion plants, you'd get thirty tons a year. The large hadron collider uses 120 tons of helium, but efficiently; present planetary helium use is about seventy-five tons a day.
For comparison, the US produces from natural gas about 76 million cubic metres of helium a year; a cubic metre of helium weighs 1000/22.4*4 grams, so 76 million cubic metres weigh about fifteen thousand tons.
Re:No more helium? (Score:3, Informative)
Nmtoken can't contain whitespace. Turn in your nerd card.
Re:Increase public awareness (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No more helium? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is a capitalist economy (Score:5, Informative)
Whups! You fail Econ 101. A market in a resource that has no clear owner is not a "well-functioning market". In such cases, you do indeed get a race to the bottom as players race to claim the resource by extracting it. This is what is meant by "the tragedy of the commons". The answer is to actually provide a well-functioning market by having clear ownership of the resource while it is still unextracted. Owners then have an incentive to leave it in the ground if there is an expectation that it will become scarce and therefore its price will rise.
Nope, it's not. An externality is a cost the supplier incurs but does not have to pay. That's not what this is.
Chris Mattern
Drilling is mining (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Time to ramp up fusion research (Score:3, Informative)
Written by someone who has never heard of a breeder reactor.
Re:This is a capitalist economy (Score:4, Informative)
In the long run, the result of the pure market system advocated by some here is that once supplies start running short, prices will increase as the supplies become scarce relative to demand. However, at that point we will already have frittered away 99% of our helium reserves, and it may be that many worthwhile usages will no long be economically feasible
I think you've got some basic facts wrong here, though I'm not sure if I disagree with at least some of your conclusions. We aren't really "running out of helium". There's still huge amounts of it captured in natural gas, most of which we're not even capturing. What's being depleted is the "strategic helium reserve" that the United States created in the 20s.
As far as the helium shortage is concerned, it's not because we've reached "peak helium", far from it. It's not even really caused by "wasteful helium usage", though I suppose you could make an argument this might help alleviate the problem. It's because some companies have gotten out of the business, and others haven't replaced it yet. The other companies haven't replaced them because the people who own the natural gas and the natural gas processing facilities already make so much money off it that trying to make money off helium offers nothing much more than a risk with a small return. They figure, why bother?
It may well still be a failing of capitalism, and "market forces" might not give a very optimum solution here. But this just isn't a case of "we used up all the helium, and now we're screwed". It's more of a case of capitalism not being as fluid and free-flowing as some people assume that it is.
Re:Thermite paint (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No more helium? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:This is a capitalist economy (Score:4, Informative)
The biggest problem is that once helium has escaped into the atmosphere it is literally lost for *EVER*. Basically the average velocity of a helium molecule is greater than the escape velocity, so it is lost into space and is irrecoverable.
Re:Capitalism can save it (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with this approach is that a nuclear fusion power plant would only consume a few grams of hydrogen per day and therefore produce only a few grams of helium daily whereas worldwide helium consumption is several orders of magnitude higher. Even if all power was produced from hydrogen fusion, power plants would only supply a tiny fraction of overall helium demand. A fusion plant's own He production might not even cover the plant's leakage.
Since fusion reactors cycle thousands of liters of He to keep their plasma levitation/containment coils nice and frosty, it would be a shame to end up in a scenario where scavenging enough He to start the reactor became problematic.
Re:Where's the problem? (Score:2, Informative)
I think it's worth mentioning two related uses for high field magnets that impact out "everyday lives" quite a bit more than particle physics (yes I am a fan and realize the potential of particle physics but I am talking about immediate impact):
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) - those babies use lots of liquid Helium to keep the magnets 4K
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR) - OK this is "almost immediate impact" on daily lives in that research into new drugs and organic chemicals would be tremendously affected and slowed without this analytical instrument.
Good news for the MRI application is that there are now Helium recyclers - instead of letting the liquid Helium slowly boil off into atmosphere, it is collected, compressed and reused. There are still losses, but instead of having to fill a half empty magnet around 4 times per year, you now have to fill about once a year.
However current recycling technology produces too much vibration for most NMR applications and currently isn't viable for this application.
Re:Increase public awareness (Score:2, Informative)
Wrong.
There are no practical high field magnets that run at 70K (Liquid Nitrogen temperature).
At the moment it's pricier so it's not used as much.
Wrong again. Liquid Nitrogen is around $100 for 200 liters.
Liquid Helium is around $700 for 100 liters.
Some facilities use exclusively nitrogen to cool their super magnets.
You're half right here (or half wrong)
All facilities with high field magnets use liquid Nitrogen as well as liquid Helium.
The liquid Nitrogen is used as a heat shield to slow boil off of the liquid Helium.
You know what they say about three strikes...
Re:Capitalism can save it (Score:3, Informative)
A fusion power plant would only produce enough helium to fill a few balloons each day so man-made helium will be a really expensive commodity once natural stocks are exhausted.
Save helium and save money by switching to hydrogen balloons. Just remember to open windows when popping them indoors to avoid detonable accumulation and keep them away from hairy surfaces when lighting them up for safe fun/show or closed-quarters disposal.
Re:No more helium? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No more helium? (Score:2, Informative)
Basically, whereas helium is less dense than air and thus raises your voice pitch, sulfur hexafluoride is more dense than air and thus lowers your voice pitch.
Very cool indeed! And sulfur hexafluoride, since it is heavier than air, will also stay down in your lungs unless you try very hard to get it out. Hello asphyxiation [ox.ac.uk]. All with the added benefit that it is a tremendously potent greenhouse gas that will never (or extremely slowly) be broken down by any natural process. Now if only everybody tried to be cool by breathing in the stuff and filling fish tanks with it. Most of humanity would win the 2008 Darwin Awards [slashdot.org], and the rest of us would enjoy a permanent tropical paradise. [wikipedia.org]
Re:And "spark plug" (Score:3, Informative)
The short answer is: we can actually calculate how much static energy each panel could hold, and how long and how powerful the spark between panels would be. There simply wasn't enough energy to ignite the panels. I think the greatest testimony against the "electric spark started it" is that Addison Bain, who popularized the "thermite paint" theory, had to hold a piece of the Hindenburg fabric in an electric plasma-arc generator (Jacob's ladder) to get it to burn, and even then not very well.
Read Appendix B for a full discussion on how much electric energy each panel could hold and discharge.