A Helium Shortage! What If We Ran Out of Helium? (2024)

FAQs

A Helium Shortage! What If We Ran Out of Helium? ›

If our supply ran out, it could spell the end of MRI testing, LCD screens and birthday party balloons. Or it could make all of those things much more expensive. Although argon — another inert gas — can be substituted for helium for welding purposes, no other element can do what helium can do in super cold applications.

“It would be foolish if it ran out, because the helium is necessary,” says Trønnes. Helium cools down magnets in MRI machines that examine people for cancer and other diseases. It is also used to make super-fast trains – such as the Shinkansen train in Japan.

Argon can be used instead of Helium and is favoured for some metals. Helium is used for many lighter-than-air applications, and Hydrogen is a possible substitute for many where the flammability of Hydrogen is not a concern.

Once helium is released in the atmosphere, it will continue rising until it escapes into space, making it the only truly unrecoverable element. Helium in recoverable quantities is found in only a few locations around the world, and these sources are being rapidly depleted.

Worldwide reserves, exclusive of the US, was estimated to be ~ 31,300 million cubic meters. Based on these figures, we estimate the current worldwide reserves will sustain the supply for ~300 years at current rates of consumption. A new USGS helium resource assessment is expected in 2019 and to be published in 2020.

Helium's unique traits make it both valuable and hard to source. It's the second-lightest element on the periodic table (hydrogen is first). It cannot be combined with other substances, and it will not freeze or liquefy in Earth's atmosphere. It also cannot be manufactured artificially.

Richardson said it has taken 4.7 billion years for the Earth to accumulate our Helium reserves. The United States' reserves were purchased in 1925 and will be gone in only a hundred years from getting it. Once the Helium is released into the atmosphere it is gone forever.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element and provides many of the same attributes as helium in many ways. These gases are much lighter than the atmospheric construct and will allow latex and foil balloons to soar. Due to their low densities, both gases, when blown into a balloon, will propel the product into the air.

Instead of filling the balloon with helium, you need to fill it with hot air. You can do this by using a hairdryer, holding the end of the balloon close to the hairdryer and letting the hot air fill it up. Once it is full of hot air, tie off the end of the balloon and watch it float!

Yes, and it works better. Hydrogen is lighter than helium, so a hydrogen-filled balloon would be even lighter, and pull harder on the string, and go higher when released. The problem is that free hydrogen is extremely flammable.

How to solve the helium shortage? ›

By recycling their existing helium, organizations can safeguard themselves against helium supply issues and insulate their budgets against helium price fluctuations. Customers can stop worrying about purchasing helium and instead rely on helium management solutions.

The two-year helium shortage has officially ended, but the market's stability remains in question amidst ongoing supply uncertainties. “Helium Shortage 4.0 is over. It's not 'maybe it's over,' it's over,” declared Phil Kornbluth of Kornbluth Helium Consulting, at gasworld's European Specialty Gas Summit 2024.

Back on Earth, SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission has been delayed because of helium issues on ground equipment. Boeing's Starliner spacecraft landed uncrewed in a New Mexico desert late on Friday.

In 2019, David Cole-Hamilton, emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of St Andrews, told the Independent that he estimated that the world had around 10 years left of helium unless more effort was put into recycling. Others suggest between 100 and 200 years of helium usage could be a best estimate.

Can helium be made artificially? Helium can be found in abundance all over the universe. In fact, it is the second most abundant element known to man. Because of its chemical composition, it is not possible to produce helium artificially, which is why it is extracted from natural gas wells.

While our planet as a whole may never run out of water, it's important to remember that clean freshwater is not always available where and when humans need it. In fact, half of the world's freshwater can be found in only six countries. More than a billion people live without enough safe, clean water.

Helium is used to cool thermographic cameras and equipment used by search and rescue teams and medical personnel to detect and monitor certain physiological processes. Various industries use helium to detect gas leaks in their products. Helium is a safe tracer gas because it is inert.

Helium is a finite resource on Earth, but the sun mass produces the stuff. Through an idea called stellar lifting, we might one day extract helium from the sun.

In the most optimistic scenario, which includes flawless execution by Gazprom to restart Amur, no sanctions on helium exports from Russia, existing sales contracts remaining in place and the ability to overcome logistics challenges, Helium Shortage 4.0 could begin to wind down during the second half of 2023 and come to ...

Barring a large asteroid impact that can inject large swaths of the atmosphere into space, the only gases that regularly escape Earth's atmosphere today are hydrogen and helium, the lightest elements in the universe. There are several ways hydrogen and helium molecules can wind up on a one-way mission to space.