If you think all helium is good for is taking hits and sounding like a high-pitched munchkin, then you don’t know helium. MRI machines, solar telescopes and even nuclear reactors are significant places where helium is used for proper function and maintenance. Unfortunately, the average person only knows that their children want helium-filled balloons on their birthday. The Independent reports that helium probably will not be around for much longer, however. The birthday balloons might fall to earth in our lifetime.
A helium shortage may cause much more problems than many recognize
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. By 2015, the law will even require the U.S. National Helium Reserve outside Amarillo, Texas, to be sold off. It is sure to be a fire sale. Similar circumstances exist worldwide for helium, making it seem as though humanity wants to cut off its nose to spite its face.
Why did this have occurred?
Cooling MRI machines with liquid helium have been customary in hospitals for some time. Homeland security also uses helium in their infrared devices aimed at detection and deterrence of terror suspects. If that’s not significant enough, nuclear facilities need helium-3 isotopes for safe operation. Wind tunnels require garden variety helium. NASA even uses helium for safely removing rocket fuel. The risk of explosion is lessened considerably. All of this, plus festive birthday balloons, could be gone in 25 to 30 years, according to experts surveyed by The Independent.
According to Nobel laureate and Cornell University physics professor Robert Richardson, “Once helium is released into the atmosphere in the form of party balloons or boiling helium, it is lost to the Earth forever”.
Do you know where helium arises from?
The Sun produces helium via the process of nuclear fusion. Helium also comes from the very slow process of radioactive decay observed in terrestrial rock. Earth gets its helium supply from the radioactive decay of rocks. It can be created by no other means, according to scientists. Since it’s taken 4.7 billion years for natural decay to produce the Earth’s current helium supply, waiting around for the planet to make more is not an option.
Imagining a $ 100 balloon
Raising the price of helium considerably is Prof. Richardson’s solution. If helium becomes 20 to 50 times more costly than the current rate (15 cubic feet of helium cost about $40 in 2009), motivation to recycle the gas would greatly increase. Consider what it will be like when a birthday balloon could cost as much as $ 100. Bet you miss helium even more now.
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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