World News

22057 readers

38 users here now

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

For US News, see the US News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried. (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 9 months ago by Five@slrpnk.net to c/news@beehaw.org

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Gurfaild@feddit.de 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It does somewhat renew itself due to alpha decay, but that probably isn't fast enough to matter.

[–] user134450@feddit.de 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

from the wiki article on Helium:

an estimated 3000 metric tons of helium are generated per year throughout the lithosphere.

I think the main issue here is not that we are loosing helium on a planetary scale but that the easy to reach helium from gas wells is wasted. We will never run out of helium at our current rate of consumption before the sun goes nova, if we consider all sources on earth, but it will get a lot more expensive and the supply will get less steady.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But we are consuming about 6 million tons per year (https://www.chemanalyst.com/industry-report/helium-gas-market-578).

The 3000 tons are just a drop in the water and it's pretty much impossible to get to all that.

[–] user134450@feddit.de 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

oh i must have missed a few orders of magnitude there. 6Mt of helium is a ridiculous amount though ... what is all that used for? according to WA that is about the water volume of the three gorges dam at STP

Edit: just read the report, wow, more than a quarter of all the helium is used just for "breathing mixes" which i assume means its for scuba diving.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 4 points 9 months ago

There's quite a large amount of the usage which could be labelled "for fun".