Not just balloons. Helium shortage may deflate MRIs, airbags and research

usatoday.com

6 pointsbookofjoe5 comments

I have a friend that is a professional diver and he says he was told from his gas supplier that there is no helium shortage. According to that guy, one of the places helium comes from is natural gas wells, and we have a lot of them.

So what's the truth?

For a long time there was not much use for helium, so it was wasted (vented in to the atmosphere). Then we started storing it. Then we sold off the stored helium, driving the prices down. Now we're out of stored helium and the prices are going up again.

And so we’re just back to letting the market decide, or will there’s be a replenishing of the reserve?

Demand must be a lot higher than it used to be, or we wouldn't have been able to sell the reserve fast enough to deplete it. As the price rises, some uses of it won't be worth the cost, and critical uses will have to become more efficient. I doubt demand will drop so much that there will be a large reserve again.

Discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887816

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