When you hear about alpha decay of radioactive materials, that is the matter spitting off a highly ionized helium nucleus, freshly birthed into this world. That He nucleus rapidly steals electrons from matter, which is how it can be dangerous to human cells if ingested.
All of that helium underground is the result of alpha decay, and a single uranium-238 element will birth 8 helium atoms as it transitions through a series of metals and one gas (radon), then finally finding stability as Pb206. U235 will birth 7, becoming Pb207.
Anyways, found that fascinating. It's just happenstance that helium often gets blocked exiting the crust by the same sort of structures that block natural gas from escaping, and they are an odd-couple sharing little in common.
One other fun fact -- radon only has a half life of 3.8 days. Uranium becomes thorium becomes radium, then radon where it has an average 3.8 days to seep out of the Earth and into our basements, where it then becomes radioactive metals that attach to dust, get breathed in (or eaten) and present dangers. In the scale of things, crazy. Chemistry is fascinating.
tfa:
> Thanks to its filled outer electron shell, it is inert, and won’t react with other materials
And by stealing those electrons from other molecules it sets off other chemical reactions, which in things like DNA is highly suboptimal. This all generally happens at the birth of the He atom, presuming it isn't in deep space or something with no electrons to cleave from neighbours, and is only an instantaneous state.
“Because they are identical to helium nuclei, they are also sometimes written as He2+…” [1].
It'd be like if the US used it's strategic oil reserve to supply the US with oil at a low price at all times.
A strategic reserve isn't supposed to be used as a supply. The existence of a strategic reserve shouldn't have an effect on the supply of helium except in an emergency. The fact that selling the helium reserve could create a shortage should tell you that it wasn't being used as a reserve but as a supply.
The US was, essentially, artificial subsidizing the price of helium. What's happening now is that people are actually paying the real price of helium.
There were several announcements, a lot of discussion, and a long process before they started selling it. It was also a temporary action, with a well known end-date (that TBH, I never looked at). It had a known and constant small pressure over investments, it wasn't something that destabilized a market.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjc6MgUY0BE
* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-theres-a-helium-sh...
* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/now-theres-a-helium-shortage-...
10-20 years ago there was a lot of talk about how this was foolish because it was depleting and squandering an unrenewable resource. But the thinking has shifted on that because it's an inevitable byproduct of natural gas production.
Now natural gas itself is limited but you can still get Helium from alpha decay of radioactive elements. Some elements are particularly strong alpha emitters (eg Polonium-210, Radium-223). They're basiclaly producing Helium constantly.
Helium is a known issue in various industries. The article notes (correctly) that MRI Helium use is decreasing because of the rise of so-called "Helium free" or "Helium light" MRI technology.
But there are short term supply issues. As noted, Qatar produces ~30% of the world's Helium currently. And that can (and has) been disrupted by recent events.
Lithography is a particularly important consumer of Helium for superconducting magnets. That demand is rising with probably no end in sight. Lithography itself is on the cutting edge of technology and engineering so seems harder to replace. I mean, EUV lithography is basically magic.
There's about 40-70 billion cubic meters of economically recoverable (assuming future technology development + price increases). The complete total upper end of known geological reserves is ~60-100 billion cubic meters - that's about correct in terms of order of magnitude even if we find new deposits.
Current consumption is 180 million cubic meters/year. At a growth of 3%, you've got 80-140 years before we run out. At 5% growth it's 50-90 years.
Saying "I'm not worried about it" is true in the myopically selfish "I personally won't have to care about it". It's conceivable that your children will be dealing with it and definitely grandchildren in a very real existentially meaningful way.
For sport and exploration divers, going there yourself is kind of the whole point. I'm not interested in watching a video feed from an underwater drone.
LorenDB•1h ago
adrianN•1h ago
wat10000•1h ago
Similar to oil and gas (although a completely different mechanism), it takes deep time to accumulate, but can be extracted much, much faster. So although new helium is being generated underground all the time, we can still run out in a practical sense.
nsxwolf•1h ago
Gas giant atmosphere extraction sounds very far future
sixhobbits•1h ago
daemonologist•1h ago
I agree that the "accumulation over millions of years" is similar (and similarly a potential problem if we burn through all that accumulation).
Sharlin•1h ago
nradov•1h ago
But we can capture more of it from natural gas wells. Today much helium is just vented off and wasted at wellheads. As the price rises it makes sense to invest in cryogenic helium capture equipment for more wells.
CamperBob2•1h ago
Same with fusion. Due to the implications of E=mc^2, fusion yields a lot of energy and a uselessly-small amount of matter. There don't seem to be many good ways to get a lot of helium besides either waiting millions of years for it to show up naturally, or carefully recycling what we already have.
kergonath•28m ago
Water would be the best for this. The cross-section is good and water can ionise easily. But yeah, you would not get a lot of it.
jmyeet•1h ago
And lastly we have alpha radiation, which is just a Helium nucleus. A sheet of paper will generally block alpha radiation.
Some materials are really strong alpha emitters. A good example is Polonium-210 where almost all of its energy from decay is in the form of alpha radiation. This is why Po-210 is so lethal when ingested, which has been used for that purpose [1].
But this means if you produce a lump of Polonium-210, it's basically radiating Helium. The source of almost all of the Earth's Helium is from uranium and thorium decay.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...
onraglanroad•25m ago
They are indeed. The average planet busting Gamma Ray Burst is just a Vogon trying to "get the whole family in".
cubefox•55m ago