US designates helium as a critical material

moralestapia

Didn't they just sell like 80% of their reserve for pennies? Edit: Yes, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-just-sold-heli... Sold at a discount, then it becomes critical so its value gets a premium. What a coinkydink.

captainmuon

After squandering the national helium reserve for years, because "lol free markets" ideology. It's crazy that we put that stuff into balloons for fun (helium is pretty abundant in the universe, but the economically viable sources are fossil).

AngryData

Meanwhile we vent 95% of extracted helium into the atmosphere as an inconvenient waste gas. If it is so important, why aren't all our gas wells extracting that helium? It is hard for me to see this as a ploy for anything other than raising helium prices for the few companies that do extract helium. In anything that helium is critical for, the helium cost is inconsequential compared to both the cost of the other equipment that uses it, and the value gained from using that equipment.

camcil

I guess this explains why it cost me $60 to fill up a handful of birthday balloons a couple of months ago.

Zenul_Abidin

You can literally find it in the air.

hkchad

Lets hope this get my T bottle's lower than $675 each, it's almost 2x what I was paying last year.

Dig1t

There's a great episode about US helium by Planet Money from 2019 that tells the fascinating story of the US helium stockpile and how the shortage was created by government decisions. https://www.npr.org/2019/08/16/751845378/episode-933-find-th...

throw0101c

Good interview on the subject on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast a few months back, "Now There's a Helium Shortage and It Affects More Than Balloons": > Ripple effects from the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue to widen. There's yet another brewing shortage, this time in helium. While most people associate helium with balloons and funny voices, the element is used in a surprisingly wide variety of industrial settings, including semiconductor production, where its role in advanced lithography has been growing rapidly. But helium mining and exploration in North America has been practically non-existent for a variety of reasons. And while the US used to have a strategic helium reserve, the government started selling that down in the late 1990s. On this episode, we speak with Nicholas Snyder, the founder and CEO of North American Helium, which does helium mining in Canada. We discuss the properties of helium that make it so useful, as well as the difficulties of expanding global production and distribution. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjc6MgUY0BE * https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/now-theres-a-helium-shortage-... * https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-theres-a-helium-sh... The US had a strategic reserve, but it was sold off: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve

nine_k

Will birthday balloons be filled with hydrogen instead? They would have a much stronger pull!

ycombinatornews

Getting Enron/PGE vibes from this timeline

ctmlr

FINALLY! Helium is for welding and science not goddamn party balloons, hydrogen party balloons sounds way more fun anyway (just keep them away from birthday candles).

brightball

Yea, the sale of the federal helium reserve never made sense to me back in 2013. https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-helium-system-sale-pro... Messer American is in a good spot now I suppose: https://www.blm.gov/announcement/blm-accepts-bids-sale-feder...

comrade1234

I thought during the last trump administration they got rid of the helium reserve and sold it all off? Or am I taking crazy pills?!

PowerElectronix

Oh no! My Helium!! C'mon... First, there's no infrastructure in the US to process the gas and purify to semi manufacturing levels. Second, as soon as the epstein war is done (either by Iran allowing navigation through Hormuz or the arab countries developing alternative routes), Helium orices will go back to be so low it doesn't make financial sense to purify unless you have the volumes they have. And by then, still no infrastructure would be ready for the task.

dathinab

wasn't Ukrain also a major helium producer before the war (and this having caused issues when the war started)?

reenorap

After decades of just dumping it on the market, despite knowing that it's essentially a non-renewable resource, we finally designate it a critical material. Talk about closing the barn door after the helium has escaped.

beloch

Helium-4 is what you get out of the ground with natural gas. Helium-3 is what you get from tritium. A combination of these two is what gives you really low cryogenic temperatures needed for quantum computing. Canada produces a lot of He-4 from natural gas and a huge proportion of the worlds tritium in its heavy water reactors. Most countries that produce tritium and He-3 tend to hoard it, but Canada is selling it cheap. If the U.S. wants to be forward looking, they should talk to Canada about a long-term tritium and helium supply contract. Edit: Of course, I would imagine it would be in the interest of other countries to do the same while Canada is placing a premium on non-U.S. partnerships.

nixonaddiction

wow if only the clinton admin hadnt sold off all our helium reserves years ago