The Russian aggression against Ukraine has lots of unintended consequences. One of them is that it is making worse an ongoing global helium shortage. Here’s the Harvard Gazette story:
This latest shortfall began last year and started gaining steam in late winter. It was triggered by a confluence of world events, including global supply-chain problems brought on by the pandemic and worsened by the war in Ukraine, as well as planned and unplanned shutdowns at major producers — such as a mid-January leak in the U.S.’s helium reserve in Texas after a four-month scheduled shutdown and an October fire and a January explosion that closed a major Russian facility.
This has already made it harder to get one’s hands on celebratory balloons, which is sad but not something I’d lose sleep over. But it’s also having an impact on fundamental and applied scientific research, anything that requires cooling much below to the liquid nitrogen temperature of -320 F or -196 C. Several of the noble gases liquify at temperatures between N and He, but there is some work that can’t be done without the cooling oomph that helium provides, with its boiling point of -452 F or just 4.2 K–as in 4.2 degrees above absolute zero.
NM 2546
Which means, as the Harvard story details for research up the street from me, that there’s a bunch of ultra cold physics that isn’t happening right now, as well as some work that extends well beyond the slow-motion quantum realm that Bose-Einstein crowd and their colleagues pursue.
Charles Vidoudez at the Harvard Center for Mass Spectrometry is starting to lose sleep over the shortage. Vidoudez, the center’s principal research scientist, uses it to keep four of the facility’s mass spectrometers at the extremely low pressures they need to be at to operate. The halt would affect dozens of labs that depend on the center to perform a range of analyses using the machines. Vidoudez has spent countless hours calling or emailing just about every supplier that he could find.
If the shortages continue, some harms may be lasting:
Anthony Lowe, the electronics technician at the instrumentation center, is responsible for the NMR lab’s liquid helium and helium gas supplies. He is particularly appreciative of the efforts because the liquid helium keeps the large magnets inside the spectrometers at about 450 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Without it, they would have to ramp down the NMR magnets. The machines, whose cost range from half a million to $2 million, aren’t meant to be turned off, however, and there’s a possibility that the NMR magnets would be permanently damaged. “It’s a risky proposition,” Lowe said.
All of which is to say that we live in a hugely interdependent world, and we thus have vulnerabilities at every turn–which everyone reading this knows, I’m sure. To get political for just a moment, this is one of the fundamental reasons why the Republican Party is so dangerous not just to civil society, but to civilization, full stop–and has been well before the Trumpian strain captured the party. If you believe, or rather, if you act as if, in the worlds of Maggie Thatcher, society isn’t a thing, you end up with a system that cannot, in the end sustain itself. The war of all against all ends in catastrophe.
Also too: don’t waste any precious helium on funny voices at a party. That shit is precious.
Open thread.
Image: Carl Larsson, Open Air Painter, 1886.
The Wire
NotMax
In related physics, dark matter detectors use liquid xenon, which don’t come cheap.
Zod
forget about those kids and moms getting blown up, we are going to have a HELIUM shortage! OMG! Are you kidding me with this dumb shit?
bbleh
Also too: don’t waste any precious helium on funny voices at a party. That shit is precious.
Hey, it’s lost once it’s in a balloon anyway. And besides, helium balloons will now cost $29.99 each.
Zod
good grief
NotMax
Science-related FYI.
bcw
A lot of labs and systems are going to closed-cycle Helium fridges where the gas is recycled and reliquefied like a household refrigerator where all the gas is sealed inside. The problem is older systems that aren’t designed to confine the Helium as it vaporizes. It takes money to convert these systems as closed-cycle is a lot more complex, requiring big vacuum pumps and piping.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
Do the systems they are a part of never require maintenance? What about power outages?
Geminid
When I look up “balloon juice” this website comes up first. If I scroll down I come upon a New York Times article from November 1, 1943 titled “New Uses for Balloon Juice.” It discusses various applications for helium in the context of the recent discovery of a rich concentration of the element in a New Mexico natural gas deposit. Since helium is a product of radioactive decomposition the New Mexico deposit may have been a good source on account of the uranium in the ground.
Helium is found elsewhere in the US and the solution to this shortage will be to build more extractive capacity, which won’t be done quickly.
mrmoshpotato
Perfectly illustrates why Dump’s America First (and fuck everyone else, and fuck my supporters too!) bullshit was such bullshit.
ETA – Oh, and calling her “Maggie Thatcher” just sounds demeaning. Well done!
Benw
I work on both liquid xenon and liquid argon detectors. The current supply chain issues are hitting us pretty hard. It’s tough to get the custom microchips from Asia that we usually use, and argon cost increases are impacting our big prototype detectors at CERN. Most of the DOE experiments I’m on are assuming things will be back to normal on the 5 year timescale that we’re looking to make significant new noble liquid purchases.
oatler
A Very Special Episode of Big Bang Theory drew attention to the helium shortage and Sheldon said Bazinga once or twice.
Geoduck
If I ever become dictator I will flat out ban helium party balloons. As noted, the stuff’s too valuable to waste with that.
WaterGirl
@Geoduck: You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone…
Old School
How am I supposed to get a laugh then?
Fair Economist
I’ve long been horrified at wasting helium on things like balloons. It’s a nearly irreplaceable precious scientific resource and the amount on Earth is very limited. Replacing it would need air scoops on Saturn and hoo boy that would be expensive.
@Benw: Surprised liquid argon is an issue. Now *that* you can distill out anywhere on Earth.
Paul M Gottlieb
@mrmoshpotato: Demeaning is exactly the correct approach to Baroness Thatcher
Anotherlurker
@Geoduck: Going further, Helium balloons are very dangerous to wildlife, especially Ocean life.
One summer, while steaming in from an Atlantic wreck dive, the Skipper spotted something floating, dead ahead. We stopped and drifted up to something 6′-7′ in length. It looks like a black, overturned dingy. When we drifted closer, we saw that it was a massive Leatherback turtle. Truly a magnificent creature but, sadly, very dead. Capt. gets on the radio and relays the critter’s current position to a Marine Mammal and Reptile rescue group. We continued on our way, all a bit heavy hearted at the death of this creature.
I spoke to the Skipper later that week and found out that the Leatherback was recovered and a Necropsy performed which revealed several balloons including 2 mylar balloons, lodged in its intestines. The best guess was that these were the cause of death.
Please, don’t participate in balloon launches.
NotMax
@Fair Economist
Keystone’s next project: pipeline to Saturn.
//
Benw
@Fair Economist: Exactly and we can start with “dirty” atmospheric argon and then filter it in-situ, but a lot of the argon suppliers are non-US which at least temporarily is causing a lot of problems!
CaseyL
Humans have been mining whatever we like, and using however much of it we want, since forever. Ditto every other resource in the world. We’re a species that doesn’t like to hear the word “No.”
Ksmiami
To reiterate FUCK Putin and his minions. And, helium balloons are evil.
NotMax
Don’t try this at home. ;)
Breathing noble gases.
Demon gas.
Baud
Helium is just two hydrogen atoms fused together. All you need is a cold fusing machine.
dmsilev
Welcome to my world. Didn’t help that there were disruptions to the US-based supply chain at essentially the same time. Massive price hikes and rationing and unreliable supply even after the first two.
I have two major cryogenic systems under my purview that use liquid helium. Even with the best recycling we can manage, the supply we have been able to get for the last four or five months have been enough to intermittently run one of the two, I’d love to replace at least one of the systems with a more modern unit that is designed from the start to be completely closed-cycle with no liquid helium needed, but, well, anyone have a spare several hundred thousand dollars?
Then we can get into the helium-three situation, which is an isotope you need if you want to cool to temperatures below 1 Kelvin. Two known sources for it: the US nuclear weapons program and the Russian nuclear weapons program (it’s the decay product of tritium). Thankfully even the older generations of systems are designed to be as closed-cycle as possible with the 3He part of the loop, because even in the best of times it’s expensive.
dmsilev
@Baud: Two deuterium atoms actually. And we have those machines: they’re called H bombs…
dmsilev
@RobertDSC-Mac Mini: So, the really nice thing about superconducting magnets is that the current keeps flowing without any power supply. In fact, NMR magnets are often designed so that the power leads going to the magnet can be detached once the thing is charged up, and then reattached if for some reason you need to deenergize the system. More stable that way.
All great until your cryogenics fail and your superconductors become normal metals and you get what’s called a quench event, liberating all that stored energy as heat in a big hurry. Can be dramatic, as whatever liquid cryogenic you have left become gaseous in that big hurry…
Baud
@dmsilev:
I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed.
Ken
@dmsilev: There is a helium-2 isotope. Just not for very long.
Kent
@NotMax: How many people have died of Monkeypox in the US since the outbreak started?
Hint, NONE. In fact, so far there are only 3 reported deaths worldwide, all in Africa. At least as of last week.
kalakal
@mrmoshpotato:
“Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Out! Out! Out!” was our preferred form of address.
An alternate was “Thatcher! Thatcher! Milk Snatcher!” *
*As Education Secretary she stopped the practice of school kids getting free milk.
Jerzy Russian
@dmsilev: If Hbombs are not your thing then the core of a star could do on a pinch.
Kelly
I vaguely recall there was a federal program to manage helium which was killed for the usual privatization bs.
Another Scott
@Kelly: The US was (and maybe still is) a big supplier of helium. The Wikipedia article on the National Helium Reserve in Texas that Prof. Tom mentions is good. Supposedly the Zeppelins used hydrogen because the US wouldn’t sell the Nazis helium.
There’s more on the reserve at the BLM – Federal Helium Program page too.
There’s nothing that’s a public good that the RWNJs won’t try to strangle and then demand be privatized, if they get the chance…
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
@Kent:
so far, there are 2 strains of monkey pox, ( one East Congo? is very deadly, the other, not so much), both are highly transmissible through aerosols, surface contact and physical contact.
what is freaking the Infectious Disease Experts out, is the number of cases outside of Africa and the spread.
Normally, they would see maybe one case a decade outside of Africa, from someone who had direct presence in areas of Africa,
Not a bunch of people who attended a rave in Southend, London, England.
The other worry, is that while the smallpox vaccine provides some protection, because of the eradication of smallpox, there isn’t a large stockpile of vaccines, and it’s pretty much only us olds who have ever been vaccinated, if it still works.
Tehanu
@kalakal:
Re Thatcher: A British friend used to call her Hitlerina and/or Attila the Hen.
On another topic: I must say that I love the Carl Larsson picture!
Kelly
@Another Scott: Thanks it all come back to me now.
different-church-lady
@Jay: Would it be easier if I just die now?
Yutsano
The thread’s open, right?
I’m not a fan of Substack really, but Peter Thiel seems nice in this one.
Jay
@different-church-lady:
It’s just another square on the 2022 Bingo Card.
2022,
screenplay by Steven King,
Cinematography by Quentin Tarantino,
soundtrack by Yoko Ono.
frosty
Has anyone working with helium pondered the fact that it’s a non-renewable resource and when it’s gone, it’s gone? Also, it’s a byproduct of natural gas wells, right? When we get off of fossil fuels and we shut those down where does the helium come from?
People mocked the Peak Oil guys but we’ll be hitting Peak Everything. We’re already on the downslope for phosphates. Good luck with large scale ag with no P fertilizer.
This has been another episode of Doom ‘n’ Gloom.
Major Major Major Major
Ugh! Oh no.
Major Major Major Major
@Yutsano: so you say a few times that freedom is incompatible with democracy, suddenly you’re a fascist? This is libtard cancel culture at its worst.
StringOnAStick
One use for helium is people deciding to check out permanently in states that don’t allow physician assisted suicide. The make your own choice group named Final Exit can provide the details and are apparently good about screening who they give the directions to.
I had assumed a few decades ago that as the Boomers approached the end of their lives that more states would allow physician assisted suicide just because it’s such a large cohort, but here we are with religious fundamentalists deciding to enforce the old fashioned theory that suffering brings the soul closer to the deity they worship. I’m glad to live in a state that allows you to make the choice to be done, though studies have shown that most people who move here to have that option in the course of whatever disease process they are dealing with don’t use it; apparently just knowing they have the option was the assurance they needed.
Jay
@StringOnAStick:
f’n Greedy Boomers\\
kalakal
The Webb telescope continues to amaze.
Here’s a classic image of how Spiral Galaxies look, good old M74 via Hubble
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-74
And here’s how it looks through Webb’s beady little eye
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220722.html
It’s like a revelation to see all that structure
Major Major Major Major
@kalakal: trippy!
Another Scott
@frosty: There are lots of people on the planet and lots of them are clever. If you wonder whether someone has thought about something, chances are that someone has indeed! :-) E.g. fusion reactors will need lots of helium – where will it come from?
FHI-Berlin:
Hey, if people need it badly enough, they’ll find a way to do it. And if we can extract 5.2 ppm He from air, then the giant vacuum that sucks in 100 cubic kilometers of air a day could be used for extracting CO2. All kinds of benefits!
I wouldn’t want to live anywhere near the giant vacuum though!!
Seriously, it’s a good paper and covers a lot of the issues we’re talking about here.
Cheers,
Scott.
bbleh
@Another Scott: And naturally production of the energy required to run these gigantic atmospheric processors would have no net effect on the atmosphere, right?
Presuming some other civilization is watching idly by some means, they must be marveling that hyoo-mans are considering building machines to process the atmosphere of their native planet in order to maintain their civilization and/or their very lives.
Another Scott
@bbleh:
Nothing that a few fusion reactors beryllium spheres and quantum flux drives can’t power.
;-)
Yeah, the power required is extreme. From the paper:
See? No problem!
;-)
Some pretty amazing things can be done now with closed-cycle refrigerators, so helium losses in low temperature physics can be greatly reduced from the case decades ago. There are even closed-loop He3/He4 dilution refrigerator systems that can get down to 50 mK (for small samples with tiny power dissipation – not suitable for your personal Tokamak).
Cheers,
Scott.
The Lodger
@Another Scott: If we’re processing that volume of air, we might as well scrub the CO2 out of it at the same time. That would be easier than extracting He, which AFAIK can’t be done with chemical methods.
Another Scott
@The Lodger: Indeed.
It looks like “fractional distillation” is the most common way to separate out pure gases. It’s very energy intensive. But at least for some gases there are different ways involving surface chemistry like “pressure swing adsorption” (can be used for separating out nitrogen from air). Maybe something similar could be done for helium in air since it (like nitrogen) isn’t usually reactive, but it would be challenging. But PSA has been demonstrated for helium in natural gas feed gas. Carl von Linde didn’t figure everything out – progress is still possible. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
@dmsilev:
It just seems kind of weird to me to have a mechanical system that has a component that is designed to not be turned off.
The obvious exception is servers and software, but those require just basic electricity. In my career, I’ve worked in the printing and heat treating industries and I can’t imagine any one of the mechanical systems I’ve worked on having components that cannot be turned off.
Another Scott
@RobertDSC-Mac Mini: I don’t know the details, but suspect that the systems can be turned off (for the reasons you cite). It’s just very disruptive to do so, and must be done carefully.
I work on some equipment that needs to stay running 24/7 for months or years at a time. When it goes down, it can take weeks or months to get it back in its productive state…
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Zod:
Do you seriously think that intelligent people cannot hold multiple things in their heads/hearts at the same time?
That it’s not possible to think that this unprovoked war/invasion of Ukraine is morally wrong and horrible on every conceivable level AND still hold the belief that science is terribly important and hold the concern that research will be stopped or impaired because of a lack of helium?
Have you not noticed that this community has raised over $50,000 for Ukraine since the invasion started?
Really? Nice entry into commenting on Balloon Juice.
J R in WV
@Jay:
I’m an old who got his vaccinations back when everyone got smallpox wounds. But then in my 20s and 30s when we kept a sweet dairy cow, while milking her by hand every day, she got sores, mostly on her nose, a few on her udder.
Phone consult with a Vet, who surmised that she had cowpox, which he told me was pretty common, and mostly harmless. We avoided using the milk until the sores were gone, a week or two. But still had to milk her every day, that never goes away with a dairy cow.
Interestingly, tho, during Molly’s illness I got an itchy little pox sore on my forearm, in spite of my 25 or so year old smallpox vaccination. They do wear out after a decade or two.
BruceJ
@Zod: Your whataboutism has been noted. Sure hope you don’t need an MRI soon!
J R in WV
Commenters like Zod are why we have Watergirl’s (and the many other contributors of ideas and thoughts to blogs) great work– especially the pie safe!