http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7400/full/485573a.html[font face=Serif][font size=5]Resources: Stop squandering helium[/font]
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30 May 2012
[font size=4]Establish a global agency to build a sustainable market for this precious commodity, say William J. Nuttall, Richard H. Clarke and Bartek A. Glowacki.[/font]
[font size=3]In recent months, researchers have struggled to obtain supplies of liquid helium for running and cooling their equipment. A UK newspaper reported in March how the shortage had led one scientist to waste £90,000 (US$142,000) because he could not run experiments on his neutron beamline for three days¹. The scientist criticized buyers of party balloons for frittering away the gas. But the blame does not lie there.
Helium is an extraordinary commodity. Its use in advanced technologies — from cryogenics and arc welding to space rockets and silicon-wafer manufacture — means that worldwide demand for this inert gas is growing rapidly. But we are not conserving this resource well. Natural gas remains the richest and most accessible source of helium; extracting it in industrial quantities from the air would be extremely costly. But too often, natural-gas plants treat helium as a valueless gas and vent it to the atmosphere. One large-scale plant producing liquefied natural gas can waste more helium than all the party balloons in the world.
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The helium that is extracted is in the hands of a few players. This, combined with the fact that there is little spare capacity, leads to intermittent supply shortages. The US government's decisions to stockpile helium in the 1960s and sell it off in the 1990s have constrained prices artificially. Economic incentives for the natural-gas industry to invest in the separation of helium have been insufficient, and although advances in fossil-fuel production methods should be making helium separation easier, this opportunity is not being seized.
As demand for helium grows in Asia and new separation plants come online in other countries, the US domination of the helium market will wane. An international body is now needed to oversee global plans for helium. We must extract and geologically stockpile the helium from gas reserves now, and postpone the use of air-extraction methods for as long as possible.
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