2

the second element

 when are we going to run out of helium?

“Helium is fairly rare on Earth. There is “The world helium supply (in-
very little in the Earth’s atmosphere because cluding reserves, active mines,
it is so light that it eventually escapes into speculated mines) in 2006 was
outer space. estimated to be 51.9 billion cubic
meters.In 2014,.
Scientists believe that most of the helium
in the universe was created at the formation the United States domestic use
of the universe. However, new helium is cre- of helium was estimated to be 34
ated in the center of stars and also as part million cubic meters.
of radioactive decay on Earth. Helium from
...
radioactive decay can be found trapped un-
derground in natural gas reservoirs.” [1] If these use statistics stay
constant over time, we have 51.9
billion/68 million =763 years left,
assuming all of the known/predicted deposits are actually ex-
tracted by mining companies. This is an upper bound, and we
have to account for usage growth, assuming recycling trends
don’t change. If we approximate usage growth by the global
population growth of 1% per year, we get ~217 years (see:
Geometric series). If instead, we use the global GDP growth
(3%) as our estimate of how helium usage will grow over time,
we get 107 years. Other worst case scenario estimates suggest
30 years. The latter two scenarios are quite dire and emphasize
the need for helium recycling/recovery and substitution when
possible. The good news is that helium is inert, so recycling is
much more straightforward than if it were reactive.” [2]
 SUPER MAGNETS AND BRAIN CELL RESE-
ARCH

Labs all over the U.S. use liquid helium to cool

instruments that will only work at super-low tem-
peratures. The devices that measure very small
magnetic fields for brain cell research need liquid
helium, for example, as do the world’s most power-
ful magnets. Liquid nitrogen can work as a replace-
ment in some cases, but it doesn’t reach tempera-
tures as low as liquid helium.

MRIs

Magnetic resonance imaging machines require

liquid helium to cool the superconducting magnet
uses of helium that provides their magnetic field. Doctors use MRIs
to diagnose cancers, tumors, strokes, heart dam-
Earth metals aren’t the only rare elements that
age and brain diseases, while researchers use them
are essential to modern technology. Helium, the
for experiments in chemistry, biology and medicine.
lighter-than-air gas that buoys balloons, also plays
Newer machines use “dramatically less helium,” but
roles in powering space shuttles, modern electron-
developing a magnet that doesn’t need any liquid
ics and next-generation nuclear reactors.
helium would take at least five years and may not
A helium shortage would affect the U.S. in myr- happen at all, according to the National Research
iad ways ... [4] Council.

4 5
Particle accelerators

Helium is a stable refrigerant that

is able to cool things down to thou-
sandths of a Kelvin, or less than minus
450 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 267
degrees Celsius). No other coolant on
Earth compares
....

Grades of helium
Digital devices Big balloons

Helium is also important to Internet The party balloon industry actually Grade 6 (6.0 helium = 99.9999% pu-
use. One method of creating semicon- uses “significant amounts of helium,” rity)
ductors, which appear in virtually all according to the National Research The closest to 100% pure helium, used
electronic devices today, requires liquid Council, but they’re not the only bal- in the manufacturing of semiconductor
helium to cool the magnets used in the loons out there. Weather balloons, chips – the tiny wafers that pack the power
manufacturing process. Meanwhile, the research balloons and Department of behind your smart phones, computers, tab-
fiber optic cables that bring Internet Defense survey balloons all use helium. lets, televisions, and more. It’s also used
access and cable TV to people’s homes in laboratories for scientific research, laser
need to be made in an all-helium atmo- cutting, MRI machines, and as a carrier gas
sphere to prevent bubbles from getting Military and defense
in gas chromatography.
trapped inside. The U.S. military’s submarine de-
tectors use liquid helium to clean up Grade 5.5 (5.5 helium = (99.9995%
noisy signals, and the U.S. Air Force purity)
Space shuttles
uses helium in experiments on super- Like 6.0 helium, 5.5 ultra pure helium
Space shuttles use liquid hydrogen conductors as a power source, accord- gas is typically considered “research grade”
and oxygen, not helium, for fuel. But ing to the National Research Council.
they still need liquid helium to clean Liquid helium is also important as a ref- Grade 5 (5.0 helium = 99.999% purity)
out their fuel tanks. Because the tanks erence point for heat-guided missiles, This high purity grade helium is also
are so cold, other liquids would freeze Peter Madrid, a helium analyst for the widely used for gas chromatography, mass
and clog the pipes. Other materials U.S. Bureau of Land Management in spectrometry, and specific laboratory re-
may also react with lingering oxygen in Amarillo, Texas, told Innovation News search when higher purity gases are not
tanks and explode, but helium is inert Daily. necessary, as well as for weather balloons
and won’t combust. [3] and blimps.

6
Grade 4.8 (4.8 helium = 99.998%
purity)
The highest of the “industrial grade”
heliums, 4.8 grade helium is often used
by the military. The rest is classified.

Grade 4.7 (4.7 helium = 99.997%

purity)
A “Grade-A” industrial helium,
99.997% helium is mostly used in cryo-
genic applications and for pressurizing
and purging, but is also used as a con-
trol atmosphere in manufacturing, as a
cover gas during welding, in breathing
mixtures for divers, and leak detection.

Grade 4.6 (4.6 helium = 99.996%

purity)
Used for weather balloons, blimps,
in leak detection, as a shielding gas for
welding, a coolant in rockets and medi-
cal applications, and as a carrier gas in
the analysis of residues.

[6]
Grade 4.5 (4.5 helium = 99.995%
purity)
Often the grade most commonly Grade 4 (4.0 helium and lower =

referred to when people say “industrial 99.99% purity)

grad”. “balloon grade helium” [5]

“balloon grade helium”

“balloon grade helium”
“balloon grade helium”

8
recycling

When liquid helium is used during an experiment it boils off, and, if no recycling system is used, the resulting helium gas is vented to the atmosphere where it cannot be reclaimed. Conse-
quently, without a system that allows for helium recycling, liquid helium must be purchased on a regular schedule from a supplier and can be a high annual cost for a laboratory that relies on
low temperature operations. Implementing a recycling system has the benefits of both reducing laboratory costs for liquid helium and allowing the reuse of a finite resource. [7]

The blockade of Qatar by its neighbours is a reminder of how the fragile geopolitics couped. The American Physical Society has helped to launch an interactive website
of the world’s helium supply leaves researchers vulnerable. But it doesn’t have to be that allows researchers to calculate whether recycling would make economic sense
this way for them or their institutions. They should give it a spin. And then they should badger
officials and administrators to get it done. As a rule of thumb, research centres using
...
more than 30,000 litres of helium a year should be investing in small-scale relique-
Other helium shortages have caused havoc for labs over the past two decades. Yet fiers. To not do so is folly, especially as political and public scrutiny of investment in
there is a simple way for researchers to both insulate themselves from supply shortag- science tightens.
es and save on their helium bills — a large chunk of running expenses in many labs.
Brown called for legislation to provide support for researchers to invest in recy-
The solution is to prevent millions of research dollars of liquid helium from literally cling. His case is difficult to fault. [8]
and unnecessarily evaporating into thin air. Helium boils at just 4 kelvin, and during
normal lab operations much inevitably evaporates, and is lost forever into the atmo-
sphere (and onwards into space). But by capturing this vented gas, up to 95% of it
can be reliquefied, stored and reused.

The recycling technology does not come cheaply ­— up-front capital investment
starts at around US$100,000 for a facility to supply even a small lab, and often costs
several million dollars for larger facilities. So recycling facilities tend to be found only
in industry, large universities and national labs.

Yet even the most rudimentary calculations show how costs can be quickly re-

10
 “The helium we use is not pure,” he said. “It’s
recycled from the gas which is used in the medical
industry, and mixed with air. We call it balloon gas
rather than helium for that reason. [9]

Recycling would save money in the long term, prevent the withering of helium-dependent research, and provide a much needed buffer against temporary shortages.
Otherwise, researchers and their funders may as well fill coloured balloons with their vented gas. Then at least we can all contemplate the spectacle of their research
cash floating away. [8]
[10]
 Selling the Helium Reserve

So, despite helium has proven itself to be an

extremely valuable commodity time and time again,
people seem to be keen on wasting it.

Why?

Well for one bad policies, and it all started going

downhill once with an absurd law passed in the Unit-
ed States in 1996 which basically mandated that all
helium reserves in the porous rock of a disused nat-
ural gasfield 30 miles north of Amarill — billion cubic
metres or about half of the world’s reserves – had to
ALL be sold by 2015 in order to make-up for the ini-
tial investment that went in building up the reserve.
“As a result of that Act, helium is far too cheap
and is not treated as a precious resource,” Professor
The law stipulated the amount of helium sold off
Richardson said. “It’s being squandered.”
each year should follow a straight line with the same
amount being sold each year, irrespective of the glob-
al demand for it. What this meant is that the market
was simply swelled by this immense influx of helium
making it too cheap. [11]
“When you buy a helium balloon, you might get
it for $3.50, but the helium in that is really worth
about $35 so it’s seriously underpriced,”

16
 Helium is a renewable. Certainly, there’s a limit to how Many people do not realize that helium is a non-renewable
much we can use today, but by tomorrow Gaia will have resource. It is made on earth via nuclear decay of uranium,
made some more for us. [12] and it is recovered from mines. Once it is released into the
atmosphere it becomes uneconomical to recapture it, and
eventually atmospheric helium will escape earth altogether
because it is so light. This is an issue that many people outside
the industries that use helium are unaware of, but one that
will eventually affect them nonetheless. [13]

18 19
the balloon council “There is no way the balloon and party industry would even consider
taking badly-needed helium from the medical profession. That is import-
ant - people have to come first.

“If I thought this industry was taking helium

away from the medical profession, I would be
looking at doing things differently.” [9]

Last year, the Balloon Council — the trade group

behind Bill Clinton’s one true source of joy — funneled
$344,099 into state lobbying efforts, trailing ma-
“According to the annual International Coastal Cleanup report prepared by the
jor interest groups like the New Jersey Food Council
Center of Marine Conservation, balloon litter on the nation’s riverbanks and beaches
($1,151,556), the New Jersey Hospital Association
has been steadily declining. However, in spite of the consistent downward trend, there
($818,332), and Prudential Financial Inc. ($778,353).
have been claims and assertions that balloons, especially those used in releases are a
Nationally, it has spent more than $1 million in the last
major source of litter in these areas.” [15]
five years.
Is balloon litter really a significant ecological issue?
The Balloon Council’s primary target? Anti-balloon
environmental laws that it worries will cripple the in-
dustry, such as the one brought before the New Jersey
House and Senate this month, which would prohibit the
“intentional release of balloons inflated with lighter-
than-air gases.”

The group, which was founded in 1990, has disco-

vered a way to outmaneuver even federal agencies like
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Administration, which say balloons
pose a threat to the environment. Today, in large part
because of its efforts, only five states have environmen-
tal balloon restrictions on the books.

Welcome to one of America’s most expensive B-list

political fights. [14]

21
[20]
 HAT-P-11b An international team of researchers, including
Jessica Spake and Dr David Sing from the University of
Exeter, have detected the inert gas escaping from the
atmosphere of the exoplanet HAT-P-11b – found 124
light years from Earth and in the Cygnus constellation.

The remarkable breakthrough was led by research-

ers from the University of Geneva, who observed the
exoplanet using the spectrograph called Carmenes,
installed on the 4-metre telescope at Calar Alto, Spain.

For the first time, the data revealed the speed of

helium atoms in the upper atmosphere of the exoplanet,
which is equivalent in size to Neptune. The helium is in
an extended cloud that is escaping from the planet, just
as a helium balloon might escape from a person’s hand.

The research team believe that the ground-breaking

study could open up new understandings of the ex-
treme atmospheric conditions found around the hottest
exoplanets.

The research is published in the leading journal,

Science, on December 6 2018.

Jessica Spake, part of Exeter’s Physics and Astrono-

my department said: “This is a really exciting discovery,
particularly as helium was only detected in exoplanet
atmospheres for the first time earlier this year. The
observations show helium being blasted away from the
planet by radiation from its host star. Hopefully we can
use this new study to learn what types of planets have
Astronomers have discovered a distant large envelopes of hydrogen and helium, and how long
planet with an abundance of helium in its they can hold the gases in their atmospheres.”
atmosphere, which has swollen to resemble
Helium was first detected as an unknown yellow
an inflated balloon.

25
spectral line signature in sunlight in 1868. Devon-based It is this phenomenon that makes HAT-P-11b so
astronomer Norman Lockyer was the first to propose inflated, like a helium balloon.
this line was due to a new element, and named it after
the Greek Titan of the Sun, Helios.

...

It is also the second most common element in the

universe and was long- predicted to be one of the most
readily-detectable gases on giant exoplanets. However,
it was only successfully found in an exoplanet atmo-
sphere earlier this year, in a pioneering study also led by
Jessica Spake.

For this new study, the research team used the spec-
trograph, Carmenes, to pull apart the star’s light into its
component colours, like a rainbow, to reveal the pres-
ence of helium. The ‘rainbow’ data, called a spectrum,
also tells us the position and speed of helium atoms in
the upper atmosphere of HAT-P-11b, which is 20 times
closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun.

...

These new observations are supported by a state-

of-the-art computer simulation, led by Vincent Bourrier,
co-author of the study and member of the European
project FOUR ACES, used to track the trajectory of heli-
um atoms.

Vincent Bourrier explained: “Helium is blown away

from the day side of the planet to its night side at over
10,000 km an hour. Because it is such a light gas, it es-
capes easily from the attraction of the planet and forms
an extended cloud all around it.”
[16] [17]

26
helium-3 mining on the lunar
surface

The idea of harvesting a clean and efficient

form of energy from the Moon has stimulated
science fiction and fact in recent decades. Un-
like Earth, which is protected by its magnetic
field, the Moon has been bombarded with large
quantities of Helium-3 by the solar wind. It is
thought that this isotope could provide safer
nuclear energy in a fusion reactor, since it is not
radioactive and would not produce dangerous
waste products.

Some teams vying for the Google Lunar

X-Prize also see mining as an ultimate goal of
their landers. ESA has also considered using
the Moon to help missions farther into the Solar
System.
 [19]

Arguments have also been made for mining Helium-3 Not everyone is in agreement that Helium 3 will produce a safe fusion solution. In
from Jupiter, where it is much more abundant – it would need an article entitled “Fears over Factoids” in 2007, the theoretical physicist Frank Close
to be given the distances involved. Extracting the molecule famously described the concept as “moonshine”. Either way, it seems we will have to
from Jupiter would also be a less power-hungry process. be patient to find out the answers. [18]

30 31
moon
The film begins with a commercial of energy is Helium-3, which is found on moon. There is only one person in the time on the base. He puts on a spacesuit
from Lunar Industries. In the late 21st the moon. Lunar Industries is responsible crew, and his contract is for three years. and goes outside, where he drives a land
Century, Earth has had an energy crisis. for the mining of Helium-3 and sending it We are introduced to the employee, Sam rover over to a Helium-3 harvester. He
Most coal, oil and natural gas reserves back to Earth. We are then shown Lunar Bell (Sam Rockwell). He has grown out collects the Helium-3 and then sends it
are nearly gone. Our new primary source Industries Sarang Mining Base on the his hair and has grown a beard during his back to Earth using a rocket. [19]

32 33
 We see how lonely Sam is when
he continually talks to himself.
 “There’s potentially helium on the moon”

[21]

“But if you think that helium is expensive now, what do

you think that it will cost if you bring it back from the moon?”
[20]
index

introduction 3

helium 4-13

uses 4-6

grades 7-9

recycling 10-13

lobbying 15-21

Helium Reserve 16-19

balloon council 20-21

helium in space 23 -27

HAT-P-11b 24-27

helium-3 mining 28-31

moon 32-34

bibliography 44-45
[22]
 [12] Worstall Tim, Breathe easy: There isn’t really a helium
shortage, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/breathe-
easy-there-isnt-really-a-helium-shortage

[13] Why We Are Running Out of Helium And What We Can Do

bibliography About It, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/01/01/
why-we-are-running-out-of-helium-and-what-we-can-do-about-
[1] Elements for Kids Helium, Ducksters, https://www.ducksters.
it/#3e641a8257ad
com/science/chemistry/helium.php
[14] Michael Waters, All hail the mighty balloon lobby, the
[2] When are we going to run out of helium?, Quora, https://
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www.quora.com/When-are-we-going-to-run-out-of-helium
post/4291/all-hail-the-mighty-balloon-lobby?zd=4&zi=hb3tsoe6
[3] 8 Surprising High-Tech Uses for Helium, NBC, http://www.
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nbcnews.com/id/47481086/ns/technology_and_science-innova-
ronment/
tion/t/surprising-high-tech-uses-helium/#.Xn03nYieRPa
[16] Denis Bajram, https://curiosmos.com/wp-content/up-
[4] https://swdic.com/radiology-services/mri-brain.php
loads/2018/12/Balloon-Like-World.jpg
[5] Grades of helium: the differences and uses, Zephyr, https://
[17] Helium exoplanet inflated like a balloon, research shows;
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University of Exeter, 6 Dec. 2018, http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/
what-are-they-used-for/
research/title_695958_en.html
[6] https://medium.com/@oliverjatwal/could-your-house-be-lift-
[18] Helium-3 mining on the lunar surface, esa, https://www.
ed-by-balloons-like-the-scene-from-up-5b7636273883
esa.int/Enabling_Support/Preparing_for_the_Future/Space_for_
[7] About Helium Conservation Technologies, https://con- Earth/Energy/Helium-3_mining_on_the_lunar_surface
serve-helium.org/about/
[19] Moon Summaries, IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/title/
[8] Helium should be recycled, nature, https://www.nature.com/ tt1182345/plotsummary
news/helium-should-be-recycled-1.22244
[20] Mary Pflum, Not just Party City: Why helium shortag-
[9] Robson Mick, Helium shortage prompts scientist’s balloon es worry scientists and researchers, NBC News, May 18, 2019,
use warning, BBC News, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-19676639 9:31 AM WEST, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/

[10] https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/170000/ not-just-party-city-why-helium-shortages-worry-scientists-research-

velka/one-dollar-bill.jpg ers-n1007151

[11] Puiu Tibi, How we’re wasting all our precious helium. A call [21] Soyuz rocket Blueprint, https://drawingdatabase.com/

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44 45