Global helium shortage from Middle East war starts hitting tech supply chains, industry says

I want my h***** generated by HUMAN hands.

From my point of view, neither are required.

But who will watch it when we’re gone

Some would call it Hent-AI. 

Life is temporary, h***** is forever.

50% of the helium used in semiconductor production is from Qatar.

Damaged or Destroyed. There is a difference between the two. But yeah it's not good.

You're spreading misinformation. No one said it was destroyed. They said it was damaged. There is an absolutely massive difference between one storage tank being hit by a drone(damaged facilities) and a smoking crater in the ground( destroyed). Read the articles before you spread misinformation.

Haha. Thank you for that, I didn't realize it was all private now already. Brilliant, and short sighted.

The economics might change, yes, but you'd need to design and build entirely new distillation lines. Not exactly something doable over night.

We should definitely stop using it for balloons too. It's not that hard to determine which rockets are necessary or just rich people showing off

Funny story, party balloons were originally rare because the governments were storing all if it in a reserve so that they could pressurize nuclear missiles during WW3. Then in the 80s the US switched from liquid-fueled ICBMs to solid-fuel ICBMs and suddenly didn't need the reserve anymore. As a result party balloons became super c****, with the 1986 price being just ten cents per balloon. As the reserve has drawn down, the price has slowly crept back up ever since. So yeah, your party balloons as a kid were subsidized by the government because they found a better way to bomb people...

You should be surprised that there is so much around. The average density of helium in the universe is only about an atom per about 10 cubic meters.

It's not that earth is running out of helium; it's more that most of the helium is extremely spread out. There are only a handful of places where we've built the infrastructure to commercially extract helium; mostly natural gas deposits with high concentrations of helium that are near the coast. But there's a lot more helium out there. In 2015, European researchers identified a string of natural gas deposits rich in helium under the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada: https://web.archive.org/web/20150906100157/http://www.eag.eu.com/about/media/lightness-of-helium/ In 2024, the US Bureau of Land Management set aside 165,000 acres in Colorado for future helium production, land that's over one of the deposits identified in 2015: https://www.hcn.org/articles/how-a-dwindling-helium-supply-is-impacting-public-land-management/ So if the US federal government decides the helium shortage is a problem that needs solving, they could probably start drilling this summer.

I cringe every time I see He balloons selling at a store. 

We started selling our helium in 2005 after a law signed in 1996 by Clinton required it. The last of it was finally sold in an auction in 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Privatization_Act_of_1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve It has nothing to do with either Trump or Biden.

While hydrogen atoms are smaller than helium atoms, hydrogen typically exists as a diatomic molecule, which is physically larger than a single monatomic helium atom. To store Helium efficiently as a liquid, it must be cooled to -269°C, the lowest boiling point of any element. Even the best-insulated tanks can only hold liquid helium for about 35 to 48 days before it warms up, turns back into gas, and must be vented to prevent pressure buildup.