Helium Shortage

[Kingpatzer]

Helium Supplies Endangered, Threatening Science And Technology

Our supply of Helium is running out.

Thoughts and comments?

My first thought is that divers tend to be environmentally minded, and I didn't realize how precious a commodity this gas is.

If we're really headed for a helium crisis, is there another gas that can replace helium for scuba use?

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I have always thought 30/30 was pretty stupid. This just provides yet another reason.

It is also a good argument for CCR as opposed to open circuit trimix.

Hydrogen works great and does not burn as long as you keep the O2 percentage under 4%. So you just need a travel gas to get to 100' then switch to your new cheap and renewable hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen trimix.

 

[Pumpkin King]

This is scientific alarmism at its finest. WUSTL is revered and releases like this gain credibility in the minds of the people because of it's association with 'so many' Nobel Prize awardees. It's a private university that focuses on research in all of it's colleges. The Nobel Prize is awarded for research. Of course there's a connection! Instead of publishing the findings of their research step-wise (A is, so B is, is C?), they publish publicly these articles which reach conclusions not supported by the research itself (A is followed by B, therefore there must eventually be a Z).

"They can either use costly machines called liquefiers that can capture, store and reliquefy helium on site, or researchers can take captured helium in gas form, return it to the company that originally sold it to them and receive a monetary return, just as in a deposit on a bottle."

Most likely, someone at the university is researching these collectors and/or liquefiers and needs some amount of public or professional outcry in order to justify grant money.

 

[lamont]

really it just needs to get expensive enough that the oil companies deploy new capital to capture it.

you notice in the article it mentioned that russia would become a big producer of helium in the future.

the problem is that everyone knows that as soon as they decide to start building more helium capacity the increase in capacity will increase supply compared to demand and world helium prices will drop. so it has to hit a point where the capital to produce the helium will payoff in the relatively short period of time that prices are likely to remain elevated. as soon as someone can make the argument that the capital will cost X and the return will be Y and the costs will be recouped in a relatively short time even given pessimistic assuptions about the markets, then they'll build new helium capacity. of course everyone will do the same math, a bunch of new capacity will be produced and then prices will crash, just like everyone expected and modelled before they started building the capacity.

so, don't sell all your OC gear quite yet...

 

[texdiveguy]

Run....the sky is falling!!!

 

[ia2189]

Not to worry, if there is a helium shortage I'm sure we'll go to war for it. I kid of course.

 

[pir8]

This comes around ever few years?

 

[mania]

You have no choice but to move to Poland as Poland is one of the world's biggest helium producer

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/helium/heliumcs04.pdf.

Mania

 

[I_R_DIVER]

What happened to the neon helium mix they said was so easy to extract I read about it again recently in the padi encyclopedia

 

[Randy43068]

NO! NO!

Sell that OC equipment. I'm ready to buy it for twenty cents on the dollar... quite generous, wouldn't you say?