Oh, the stupid, it burns.
Helium shortage threatens time-honored Nebraska tradition | Dr. Saturday – Yahoo! Sports http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/helium-shortage-threatens-time-honored-nebraska-tradition-152527242–ncaaf.html
Face palm! Unfortunately, there’s this nagging little detail about the noble gas, Helium, one of the most stable and chemically inert elements there is.
Helium is a result of radioactive decay. I don’t think global warming is powerful enough to overcome the forces in the nucleus of an atom yet.
On Earth it is thus relatively rare—0.00052% by volume in the atmosphere. Most terrestrial helium present today is created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy radioactive elements (thorium and uranium), as the alpha particles emitted by such decays consist of helium-4 nuclei. This radiogenic helium is trapped with natural gas in concentrations up to 7% by volume, from which it is extracted commercially by a low-temperature separation process called fractional distillation.
How hard could this have been to look up?
BTW Methane CH4 (Natural gas) is lighter than air, maybe they’ll switch to that and endure the caterwauling for releasing a GHG about 20 times more potent than CO2.
h/t to Marc Morano
UPDATE: Maybe the National Helium Reserve will be brought to bear in this crisis. Who knew?
The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, is a strategic reserve of the United States holding over a billion cubic meters (1E9 m3) of helium gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Amarillo, Texas, in a natural geologic gas storage formation, the Bush Dome reservoir. The reserve was established in 1925 as a strategic supply of gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Space Race and Cold War.
h/t to Chris Horner
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The “permlink”to the article does not work the way I would expect it to.
Did I miss the mention of the anguish from avian (and other wildlife) and aviation interests over this ritual?
It’s a good thing helium is on Facebook. So we can all contribute by liking it.
I blame the shortage on the shennanigans of Barry Kripke.
Nobody likes a wise quack. 😉
Faux Science Slayer says:
August 16, 2012 at 6:41 pm
“[fusion produced Helium may never be a manmade reality]. ”
It is already a reality. Use a Farnsworth Fusor. It doesn’t produce net energy, and can’t for principal reasons, but it fuses. Used as a neutron source.
The only practical problem would be the tiny amount produced for the energy invested.
So I see Helium “shortage” as a simple supply- and demand problem. A low price simply indicates that there is still enough around, and that there is currently no shortage.
Werner Brozek-The elementary physics lesson was a bit patronizing. Obviously you could lose helium by fusing it to get some heavier element or splitting it and getting hydrogen. But none of those things are things humans do with helium, on Earth. To the extent we create fusion reactions, it’s generally with hydrogen, and to the extent we create fission reactions it’s typically with much heavier elements.
However, I have to admit I wasn’t aware that helium was being lost to space by the Earth’s atmosphere. That can’t be a terribly fast process, though, can it?
Somehow I think its all down to Mann
…. He ….He …. Heeeee. hheee, eeeee
Would this fall under the category of a Wiki leak?
timetochooseagain says:
August 17, 2012 at 12:42 am
Werner Brozek-The elementary physics lesson was a bit patronizing.
However, I have to admit I wasn’t aware that helium was being lost to space by the Earth’s atmosphere. That can’t be a terribly fast process, though, can it?
Please accept my apologies if I offended you. On blogs like this, I have no idea what your background is or for that matter what the background is of other people wanting an answer to the same question. When I replied to a similar question years ago, I was criticized for not going into the Boltzmann distribution in my answer. When I taught physics, I knew what previous knowledge I could expect my students to know. And I also knew the depth to which new material had to be covered. But in blogs like this, there is no limit in either direction.
At the following, http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/31/i06/html/06chem.html,
I found this quote
“Once released from soil or water, a given helium atom remains in the atmosphere for a million years on average, after which it is irreversibly lost in space (3). Despite this long residence time, helium is considered a nonrenewable resource.”
No problemo. Place a huge magnetic funnel near the earth & gather alpha particles from the solar wind. Or just take a big scoop outta the sun & pass it thru a H2-sieve. 🙂
Where are the Enviro-Crazies on this? Although a latex balloon is biodegradeable (a year or two, maybe) the ribbon(s) are not – and the photo CLEARLY shows that some balloons are tied with ribbon. Some poor little fawn somewhere may inadvertently eat it…or something.
Oh, maybe all this AGW will accelerate the decomposition of the ribbon or flat-out kill all the deer before they can produce cute little fawns – so maybe the enviro-crazies aren’t all that concerned after all.
The destruction of the Hindenburg airship came about by the necessity to use hydrogen instead of helium for buoyancy. The US wouldn’t let Nazi Germany have any of that helium from the very same reserve to make it float safely.
Kaboom . . . you referenced a sport link . . . C&P as follows. . .
“”””Oh, the stupid, it burns. Helium shortage threatens time-honored Nebraska tradition | Dr. Saturday – Yahoo! Sports http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/helium-shortage-threatens-time-honored-nebraska-tradition-152527242–ncaaf.html Face palm! Unfortunately, there’s this nagging little detail about the noble gas, Helium, one of the most stable and chemically inert elements there is.””””
true true . . . but kaboom is not a sport!! I will try to let yahoo know that your link did not link . . . anyone out there have the same problem??? . . . . or is it just me???
Moderator, delete this if in anyway be considered not in the posting policy . . . I understand in advance . . .
Greg Roane . . . . stop poking the bear!
Neon is produced today by distillation from the atmosphere, as is Xenon. Helium’s number of ppm in Earth’s atmosphere is 30% as much as Neon albeit around 60 times more than Xenon. Of course, helium from natural gas is less expensive, but the capability to distill from the atmosphere puts a cap at least on potential price rise.
“fractional distillation”
So you’re saying they frack after they frack….double frack. I hear watermelon heads exploding!!
timetochooseagain says:
August 17, 2012 at 12:42 am
However, I have to admit I wasn’t aware that helium was being lost to space by the Earth’s atmosphere. That can’t be a terribly fast process, though, can it?
As I said above it’s lost at about 50 gms/sec.
Faux Science Slayer says:
August 16, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Atomic number nor distillation have anything to do with Helium loss….it is terminal velocity [not ‘thermal velocity’ as above] due to Helium buoyancy.
Nothing to do with buoyancy it’s loss due to thermal velocities in excess of escape velocity, ( aka Jeans escape).
UPDATE: EPA reveals latex balloons found melted in mileamore bird nests in 2011. Hatchlings suffocating. Global warming, Cornhuskers blamed. Bird to go on endangered list .
Releasing Helium should produce a cooling effect as the balloons rise, expand and take thermal energy out of the earths atmosphere and into space. Helium is an excellent conductor of heat and it isn’t trapped by gravity like heavier gases.
@ur momisugly Kaboom says:
August 17, 2012 at 9:19 am
It is my recollection that Russia had the most H2 at that time, assuming it was a fact that there was a lot of natural “gas” there. . . it was rare/there but expensive (but/and because of political implications). . . . I understand how the Kaboom happened (H) . . . to the Led Zeplin/Hindenberg.
Although, “transmutation” is/was/always will be possible, but, at the time not, economically feasible. . . it’s possible! . . . but, technically not very profitable,even today, . ..evidently “we” need more ingenious physical research!
TGIF!
And now for the Next Big Thing. Sending a ship to Jupiter with the capacity to store a billion liters of Helium. Of course it won’t take up that much volume because it’ll be liquified for storage. Shouldn’t be too difficult to do as cold spots in deep solar space can be made just about anywhere by popping open a sun shade.
The storage ship will stay in Jupiter orbit, outside the rather nasty radiation zone. The collectors will zip in on parabolic trajectories, skimming the upper atmosphere, ramming gasses into tanks.
After their screaming fast transits they’ll fly back to the storage ship where the collected gasses will be separated. Undesired product will be put back aboard the collectors to be dumped back into the atmosphere of Jupiter while a small amount will be used for RCS thrusters.
It won’t be just helium they’ll be bringing back. There’s other rare gasses and possibly chemical compounds in Jupiter’s atmosphere that are in short supply or difficult to produce on Earth.
But wait! There’s more! After the second ship goes out, the third and later ones will be able to get to Jupiter quicker because they won’t have to carry as many or any collectors. When the full fleet of storage ships is in service, they’ll be arriving and departing on a regular schedule, all using the same collectors carried out by the early storage ships.
Think of it like resource production in a real-time strategy game. In the early game you only have a few units gathering resources so you’re almost always on the verge of running out. In the late game, if you’ve built well, you have more resources than you can use because there’s a constant stream of units shuttling back and forth from the resource deposits to your buildings which refine the resource.
With one storage ship with a billion liters of helium and other gasses aboard arriving in Earth orbit every two to three months, the prices would be dirt cheap – once the costs of the hardware put into space is paid off.
What would work out better is to establish a pricing plan for the product that adjusts in stages as more ships are put into service. Figure on a point where ships will have an end to their life so that as one ship is taken out of service, a new one replaces it. The end price of the product has to be high enough to produce enough net income for maintenance and replacement, plus, y’know, profit – the main reason most businesses exist.
timetochooseagain:
the railroads ship helium in very large tank cars. they are about 10 feet in diameter and 60 feet long. loaded weight is ~100 tons. three tons of that is the helium. (yes they cram it in there pretty tightly, working pressure is about 3000psi). the point is that helium is LIGHT in weight.
by the way, whenever you see a welder welding aluminum with a heliarc keep in mind he is bleeding about 10 cfm of helium into atmosphere as he works.
C
So we have a shortage of helium much of which is stored in the Bush Dome. Does that mean that it is Bush’s fault? But of course!
If up to 7% of NG recovered is He, there’s no problem. Once the price rises to the point it’s worth capturing, there will be all we need. E.g.: 14.28 tcf of NG will yield up to 1 tcf of helium. Which is a sh**load.
timetochooseagain says:
August 17, 2012 at 12:42 am
Werner Brozek-The elementary physics lesson was a bit patronizing. Obviously you could lose helium by fusing it to get some heavier element or splitting it and getting hydrogen. But none of those things are things humans do with helium, on Earth. To the extent we create fusion reactions, it’s generally with hydrogen, and to the extent we create fission reactions it’s typically with much heavier elements.
ttca;
My fave energy solution (which brushes aside and renders moot the entire CO2 warming fooforah) is LPPhysics.com ‘s boron fusion-fission process. H + B11 → C12 → 3 He . The total mass involved is not huge, but at least it will be contributing.