A fragile stability
The helium we use right now fashioned from the breakdown of radioactive supplies hundreds of thousands of years in the past and has been trapped in rocks beneath Earth’s floor ever since.
Helium is often extracted from these underground reservoirs together with pure gasoline, as John Mattill defined in an article from our January 1986 problem: “Helium can be readily separated from the gas before combustion, but the lower the helium concentration, the higher the cost of doing so.”
Generally talking, helium concentrations should be at the least 0.3% for gasoline corporations to trouble with it. Such ranges may be present in solely a handful of nations together with the US, Qatar, Algeria, Canada, and South Africa.
Helium shortages are usually not attributable to a scarcity of helium, then, however the incapability of producers in these few international locations to ship it to prospects in all places in a well timed method. That can occur for any variety of causes.
“It is a very global business, and any time a war breaks out somewhere, or anything like that, it tends to impact the helium business,” says Kornbluth.
Another problem is that helium atoms are so mild Earth’s gravity can’t maintain onto them. They have a tendency to simply, nicely, float away, even escaping specifically designed tanks. Up to 50% of helium we extract is misplaced earlier than it may be used, based on a brand new evaluation introduced by Siddhantakar final week on the International Round Table on Materials Criticality.
Given all this, international locations that want quite a lot of helium—Canada, China, Brazil, Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and the UK are among the many high importers—should continually work to make sure a dependable provide. The US is likely one of the largest customers of helium, however it’s additionally a number one producer.
For a long time, the worldwide helium market was carefully tied to the US authorities, which started stockpiling helium in Texas in 1961 for army functions. As Howland wrote in 1975, “The original justification of the federal helium conservation program was to store helium until a later time when it would be more essential and less available.”