Topic: Are We Running Out of Helium?

[SlowModem]

I saw this news article today:

The best part of a party is the balloons -- but not for long: Experts say we're running out of helium.

That's it, the party is over... in 25 to 30 years. According to The Independent, humanity is squandering the Earth's supply of the second-lightest element in the known universe, helium, at a rate that could deplete our reserves in only three decades.

With the lowest boiling point of any gas, helium is quite useful in all sorts of operations like cooling nuclear reactors, detecting infrared radiation and MRI scans (and of course, making the human voice sound funny). Taken together, those things are -- dare we say it -- more vital than party balloons.

According to Robert Richardson, Nobel Laureate and physics professor at Cornell University, the primary reason humans are wasting this precious resource at such a tremendous rate has to do with the US Congress (shocking, we know). You see, back in 1925, the government decided to stockpile all available helium in a giant underground well near Amarillo, Texas. The US National Helium Reserve, as it's now called, is now by far the largest store of helium left on the planet, containing nearly 50 percent of the world's reserves.

In 1996, Congress, in its infinite wisdom and apparently seemingly infinite supply of helium, decided to sell off the entire reserve by 2015 to recoup some financial losses -- all of it! Following the law of supply and demand, a concept that was apparently not well understood by the political class of the mid 90s, that resulted in an artificially low price for helium. The price is now so low that it is impossible to justify any attempt at conservation or recycling, which means that we may be on the road to helium extinction.

In effect, Congress' decision to dump its helium onto the marketplace has had a worldwide effect. "You might at first think it will be peculiarly an American topic because the sources of helium are primarily in the US, but I assure you it matters of the rest of the world also," Richardson explains in The Independent.

The emptying of the US National Helium Reserve has helped make helium the world's most popular inert gas, used with abandon in both life-saving applications and the much more frivolous party balloons. In Professor Richardson's estimation, the price of a helium-filled party balloon should actually be hovering around $100. In our experience? You can get one for as low as $1.

So why not just make more helium, right? Because helium is a non-renewable resource, one that cannot be manufactured by man. That seems an important thing to emphasize. "Once helium is released into the atmosphere in the form of party balloons or boiling helium it is lost to the Earth forever, lost to the Earth forever," Professor Richardson tells the Independent.

I assume this is true (but just because it's on the internet doesn't make it true!).  If anyone knows if this is true or false, please tell us what you know.

[mackbig]

Just start using Hydrogen...  I think they tried that already back in the 30's, but that would make for some fun party balloons.

Will the earth run out of helium? Perhaps, but only after we run out of natural gas (which is where its extracted from).  There's probably a chance that demand will outpace supply if this article has some truth to it.  Your $1 balloon might cost $2 or $5 or ????

Andrew

[wxtech]

I'm familiar with Helium as a research commodity but not much knowledge of its source.  Our source was directly from the U S Bureau of Mines in Amarillo.  Other sources were outrageously expensive (before 1990).  I do know that it can be obtained from natural gas.  The US produced natural gas has a usable amount of Helium while other countries has no usable amount of Helium in their natural gas.  We had an 'Arthur Little' machine that extracted Helium but it wasn't economical to operate.
Helium is a valuable tool to use in detecting leaks in plumbing.  Helium will pass through seals and even (some types of) glass.  Liquid Helium is valuable as a refrigerant for research since it is the coldest liquid ~-450ºF.  In transferring liquid Helium in double walled dewar plumbing, the outer surface of the pipes would get extremely cold that the air next to the pipe would condense and liquefy (frost over then drip liquid air).  
When Helium escapes from containment it is lost to the atmosphere.  We used Helium gas to produce liquefied air.  
I don't think we'll deplete our Helium.  We will consume the cheap, U S Government source, of Helium and the price will increase to the actual cost of production of Helium.

[wxtech]

Here is a fun experiment.  
A party balloon is a mixture of Helium and compressed air.  In days/weeks the party balloon will lose some of the Helium through the vinyl balloon.  The balloon will shrink in size.  It isn't because of leakage from the tied tube but from the Helium passing through, exiting, the vinyl.  The compressed air will remain in the balloon for a longer time.
A.