If we ran out of helium, I'd never get the kids to behave!
Posted on 09/27/2013 10:14:51 AM PDT by Red Badger
Helium, an inert chemical element extracted from natural gas, has been produced and stored by the US government since World War I. It was initially used for military purposes, including in reconnaissance aircraft.
If I understand this correctly The US Bureau of Land Management owns a industrial gas plant that produces Helium that produces and roughly 35 percent of global demand for the gas.
If the US is trying to get out of the Helium business why not auction off the plant to the highest bidder. This would recoup some of the money the government has invested in the plant and would avoid disrupting the world market for helium.
The price may rise temporarily but there should be no disruption in supply. If there is a profit to be made in helium someone will step up to produce the gas. If the US Government has 35% if the market there is only one reason that it does and that is that the government is selling it at below market prices and inhibiting the industrial gas industry from getting in to the market.
That's methane.
It’s very uplifting.
the sort of GAS they emit on a regular and consistent level may not meet the proscribed standards....
I’d love to know the budget and number of employees for the Federal Helium Program.
They sit around all day talking like Donald Duck.............
No, helium escapes the earth’s atmosphere once released.............
Where does it get these two 'free' electrons? Obama-electrons?...............
Somebody is making money somewhere in this deal, and it sure as heck ain’t us taxpayers!.............
LOL!!! very good!............
If it were so essential, we shouldn’t need the government supporting it. It is ridiculous that helium, is cheap enough to use for balloons. I’m not supporting price regulation at all. Let the market find the appropriate price for it.
From: http://phys.org/news201853523.html#jCp
“The world is running out of helium: Nobel prize winner”
Aug 24, 2010 by Lin Edwards
“Professor of physics, Robert Richardson from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, won the 1996 Nobel prize for his work on superfluidity in helium, and has issued a warning the supplies of helium are being used at an unprecedented rate and could be depleted within a generation.”
“Liquid helium is vital for its use in cooling the superconducting magnets in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. There is no substitute because no other substance has a lower boiling point. Helium is also vital in the manufacture of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and fiber optics”
(SNIP)
“There is no chemical way of manufacturing helium, and the supplies we have originated in the very slow radioactive alpha decay that occurs in rocks. It costs around 10,000 times more to extract helium from air than it does from rocks and natural gas reserves.”
(more at link)
From the KS Geological survey 2011;
“Kansas is also the leading U.S. producer of helium, a product of natural gas, mostly from the Hugoton field.”
So, until safe high capacity production hydrogen fusion reactor is built allowing us to reap the newly produced helium for our children’s birthday balloons....
Many people don’t realize that helium is essential to welding of aluminum - not sure you can make consistently high quality welds without it. There are other inert gases that can be used, but none works as well as helium.
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