Balloon industry deflates due to global helium shortage Update

Some experts predict there will be no more helium left for the party industry in less than a decade.

"It is serious. It is not something that is going to rectify itself within a short space of time. People have predicted that by 2020 there will be no more helium left for the party industry," John Lee, chairman of the balloon industry body NABAS, told the Independent.

There are extraction plants in Canada, Russia and Poland, with America producing about 75 percent of the world’s helium.

However, many say it’s far too valuable to waste on party balloons given that between 2002 and 2007 the price of the gas has doubled.

read at http://rt.com/art-and-culture/news/helium-shortage-party-balloons-637/

Gas-cooled reactor

....The GCR was able to use natural uranium as fuel, enabling the countries that developed them to fabricate their own fuel without relying on other countries for supplies of enriched uranium, which was at the time of their development only available from the United States or Soviet Union.

....A gas-cooled reactor (GCR) is a nuclear reactor that uses graphite as a neutron moderator and carbon dioxide (helium can also be used) as coolant. Although there are many other types of reactor cooled by gas, the terms GCR and to a lesser extent gas cooled reactor are particularly used to refer to this type of reactor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas-cooled_reactor

Notice helium above and the only two countries it's available from?

That would put a big hole in their income so we have to do without?

Listen guys you gonna let them take away your kids party balloons to make money from selling helium too? When is enough, enough?

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Comment by Maria De Wind on August 28, 2012 at 1:48am: The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, is a strategic reserve of the United States holding over a billion cubic meters (1E9 m3) of helium gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Amarillo, Texas, in a natural geologic gas storage formation, the Bush Dome reservoir. The reserve was established in 1925 as a strategic supply of gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Space Race and Cold War. The facilities were located to be close to the Hugoton and other natural gas fields in southwest Kansas and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma. The natural gas in these fields contains unusually high percentages of helium, from 0.3% to 2.7%; they constitute the largest source of helium in the United States. The helium is separated as a byproduct from the produced natural gas. After the "Helium Acts Amendments of 1960" (Public Law 86–777), the U.S. Bureau of Mines arranged for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. For this helium conservation program, the Bureau built a 425-mile (684 km) pipeline from Bushton, Kansas, to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field. This helium-nitrogen mixture was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, when it then was further purified. By 1995, a billion cubic metres of the gas had been collected and the reserve was US$1.4 billion in debt, prompting the Congress of the United States in 1996 to phase out the reserve.[1][2] The resulting "Helium Privatization Act of 1996" (Public Law 104–273) directed the United States Department of the Interior to start liquidating the reserve by 2005.[3] By 2007, the federal government was reported as auctioning off the Amarillo Helium Plant. The National Helium Reserve itself was reported as, "(S)lowly being drawn down and sold to private industry."[4] References

1 Emsley, John. Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Page 179. ISBN 0-19-850340-7

2 Guide to the Elements: Revised Edition, by Albert Stwertka (New York; Oxford University Press; 1998; page 24) ISBN 0-19-512708-0

3 http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309070384/html/index.html Executive Summary

4 Babineck, Mark, "Feds hope a buyer will rise up," 4 August 2007, Houston Chronicle

Comment by suzie on August 27, 2012 at 9:11pm: what is helium?

Helium-3 (³He) is an isotope of helium that has two protons and one neutron in its nucleus. It is a rare isotope of helium, 0.000134%, most of which occurs with a pair or protons and a pair of neutrons in its nucleus (helium-4).

HOW DO YOU MAKE HELIUM?
When we talk about an isotope of a given element by stating the element and then assigning a number, the number represents the number of nucleons in that isotop. The term nucleon refers to one of the particles that makes up an atomic nucleus, which is either a proton or a neutron.

How do they make helium? Think about it. It's an inert gas that doesn't combine with anything else, so there can't be helium mines filled with helium ore. The only place I've ever heard of where you can find a lot of helium is the sun, where it's created by fusion. Fusion is prohibitively expensive on earth, yet somehow commercial helium is cheap enough that they can fill toy balloons with it. What's the deal?

— Bob Y., Evanston, Illinois

Cecil replies:

Come now, Bob, everybody knows fusion isn't the only way to make helium. It's also a by-product of radioactive decay. (The "alpha particles" emitted by some radioactive materials are actually helium atoms minus the electrons.) To get helium all you have to do is find yourself a planet full of uranium and thorium and the like, wait ten jillion years, and presto, you're up to your ankles in the stuff. The helium on the earth's surface drifts off into space, but underground a lot of it collects in pockets of natural gas, particularly in the gas fields of the southwestern U.S. Liquefy the natural gas and filter out impurities and what's left will float a dirigible, cool a nuclear reactor, or make the strongest man sound like a chipmunk. Definitely one of nature's noble gases.

— Cecil Adams

HELIUM ~ another thing we may have to tell our children we use to take for granted?

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_helium-3#ixzz24naGGtDs