The Federal Helium reserve is for sale
gsa.gov
gsa.gov
I'm told that https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/helium/fede... is also good.
Thanks to the users who suggested these!
The Wikipedia page for the Helium Act of 1925 [3], which created the National Helium Reserve, does mention USA was the only important source of helium at the time, and amongst other things the act banned Helium exports. Given the rarity of Helium, this sounds like a good idea.
This privatization effort seems to be part of the Helium Privatization Act of 1996 [2], passed under Bill Clinton, and I couldn't quickly find any reasoning for its implementation (perhaps I'm not Googling the right question?). I wonder why they decided it'd be better to privatize it, considering the USA (at least as of 2018) still accounted for over half of worldwide helium exports [4]. It does still sound like a strategic and rare resource worth keeping under tight control, IMO.
[1] https://youtu.be/mOy8Xjaa_o8?si=hMt24B9FMyy-TSBI&t=250
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Privatization_Act_of_19...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Act_of_1925
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235248472...
[1] https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/New/other/sotu.ht...
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-signing-...
A stockpile of 1 billion cubic feet of helium only is for sale as a separate lot: https://disposal.gsa.gov/s/property/a0Xt0000005z684EAA/feder...
I don't understand why you'd measure the amount of a gas in volume units (e.g. cubic feet) given that any gas is "elastic" in volume, i.e. can take pretty much any volume depending on the pressure.
> Standard cubic foot (SCF) means the volume of gaseous helium occupying one cubic foot at a pressure of 14.7 psia and a temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit. One liter of liquid helium is equivalent to 26.63 scf of gaseous helium. One U.S. gallon of liquid helium is equivalent to 100.8 scf of gaseous helium. One pound of liquid helium is equivalent to 96.72 scf of gaseous helium. If BLM approves, you may use appropriate gaseous equivalents of volumes of helium mixtures different from these figures.
I was looking at ground based inflatable satcom rigs - these things run 250k+. All the descriptions are a model number and _maybe_ what bands it targets.
> 3. INSPECTION No one will be allowed access to the Property without the presence of a BLM employee or designee. Bidders are invited, urged, and cautioned to inspect the Property prior to submitting a bid. Photos provided by the Government may not represent the condition or existence of any improvements of the Property and are NOT to be relied upon in place of the Bidder's own inspection. Any maps, illustrations or other graphical images of the Property are provided for visual context and are NOT to be relied upon in place of the Bidder's own inspection. The failure of any bidder to inspect, or to be fully informed as to the condition of all or any portion of the Property, will not constitute grounds for any claim or demand for adjustment or withdrawal of a bid after the auction.
A potential buyer is expected to do their own due diligence before submitting a bid. This collection of assets and contracts is likely worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, any potential buyer will have a team doing due diligence.
If they were trying to get the highest bid possible, wouldn't it make sense to provide more info to potential buyers?! The way they present it, you shouldn't even bother if you aren't already in the know.
This facility was paid with public dollars, we all paid for it. There is no national secrets to protects or dangerous weapons, leaking photos and technical documentation has no downsides if we assume they aren't trying to scam buyers.
This is typical of government auctions, large and small. I suspect part of it is to not mislead the buyer with rosy pictures/descriptions, and part of it is their basic MO: "you take everything whether you want it or not".
If you've ever bid on pallets of surplus gear it is not unusual to have a few interesting items like computers or test equipment mixed in with absolutely useless crap like giant bolts. This is not an accident, nobody would bid on a bunch of giant bolts if they weren't mixed with stuff people want. You are required to take everything on the pallete with you when you win.
https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/helium/fede...
I think it makes sense to retain our nation's helium reserves.
It is very much harder to fuse helium-4.
(Tritium (3H) decays into 3He with a 12 year half life. Before 12*n years, tritium is radioactive and denser than water and so it will pool and concentrate in ocean cavities for example at the seafloor. Tritium also probably has affinity for certain types of trash floating in the ocean, which Seabin and The Ocean Cleanup are addressing.)
Is laser-based nuclear transmutation of e.g. He4 into He3 easier with the high heat of a nuclear fusion reaction?
Helion's fusion process involves both He3 and He4: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37403522
Generous take: congress recognizes government entities are inefficient and do a poor job at things like properly pricing and providing goods and services, which is explicitly outlined as a reason congress gave: selling it at market-driven prices
They give other reasons but there's basically zero reason to trust them. The truth is likely somewhere between the two takes above.
Government being inefficient is required for private companies to have any interest in ownership because profit is the incentive to solve market inefficiency.
If the government was doing an awesome job, the private sector wouldn't have any interest.
Or, if the government was doing an awesome job, the private sector might want to get rid of public sector price ceilings.
The private tax prep lobby wants to keep the government out of tax filing.
Logistics companies want to kill the USPS.
As administrations have come and gone, there's been a back and forth between officials who want to privatize health, claiming inefficiency, dilapidated facilities and that the system is a drag on public finances, and officials who want to save the system from what they claim is purposeful gross mismanagement by administrations who want excuses to privatize it.
Overall, even if not as pristine or efficient as the private sector, this system of healthcare does means the private industry has to compete with "free".
When I have a cold, I don't think I've spent more than $10-20 on a private doctor's appointment, out of pocket with no insurance. I had a rare eye condition called Keratoconus. In the USA, the specialized procedure to treat it seems to generally cost between $2,500 and $4,000 per eye [1]. I paid about $650 per eye on a private ophthalmology clinic, again, with no insurance.
EDIT: To add an addendum, and in the topic of "efficiency", whenever I'm back home I tend to have more face-to-face time with my doctor. There isn't a team of nurses on every clinic to talk to and do the menial work. I even book appointments directly via WhatsApp with my gastroenterologist, and transfer money directly to their bank account, instead of going through a front-desk secretary, forms, and apps/paperwork. Without insurance "networks" I hear of a good doctor and just go, no problem.
This also means I tend to go to the doctor when I'm home, rather than when I'm in the USA. I find very interesting how for me personally, the experience seems to be much better in a country with an overall lower purchasing power than the USA.
[1]: https://www.nvisioncenters.com/corneal-cross-linking/costs-a...
Helium party balloons exist because the government is pricing helium below market value which both causes wasted helium and prevents private competition. Notice how USPS, which is required to operate as a business would (paying its own bills, which it does) has competition in the market?
There's definitely a role for the government in a lot of sectors but I can't for the life of me imagine why helium should be owned and operated as a government service.
I thought we'd collectively realized that "run the government like a business" was this ridiculous notion that the owning class sold us to raid public coffers to enrich their own, to our detriment.
Helium prices are artificially low leading to it's irreverent use.
The market does things efficiently, they are only occasionally and incidentally desirable things. It more often does undesirable things efficiently.
The market is a tool like any other tool. It's effective, but has no innate value positive or negative in what direction that effectiveness is applied. It is a saw that will equally effectively cut your lumber or your leg.
When you apply that lack of value to a human, the term is sociopath, and is pretty much equated with evil outside of a clinical context. Not because the sociopath actively wants to harm, but merely because they are truely neutral and don't care one way or another.
The market is sociopathic, and is unfit for deciding anything.
It might happen, but only at vastly higher helium prices.
There is so much groupthink (most due to the political manipulation) that you can’t talk to people. They’re so caught up in group messages that they don’t think for themselves or have the data or Mind even get it.
It’s the most worrying thing.
But, natural gas will be still produced as an industrial feedstock; annual world consumption of helium, assuming 100% recovery rate (which may be possible or almost possible if supply is tight), can be almost produced from the amount of natural gas consumed for non-energy use worldwide, i.e. as industrial feedstock. Which sort of guarantees availability in the future too.
Apparently for diving purposes it's as high as $2.0 per cubic foot. [1]
[0]: https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-helium.pdf
> They are developing a magneto-inertial fusion technology to produce helium-3 and fusion power via aneutronic fusion, [2][3] which could produce low-cost clean electric energy using a fuel that is derived exclusively from water. [4]
Here's the part of the Real Engineering video where it is explained how 3He and 4He Helium isotopes are fusion byproducts and fuel used to generate electricity with nuclear fusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38&t=12m40s
(From "When Will Fusion Energy Light Our Homes?" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34582798)
Doesn't this new nuclear fusion process also change the valuation of the Tritium in [Fukushima Daiichi,] heavy water? Why would you dump money into the ocean?
This video provides background to explain some of that, but essentially, 1) It's hard to extract the heavy water from regular water. If you could do that efficiently there wouldn't have to be dumping of tritium into the ocean. 2) There's so little tritium in the released heavy water to be useful for nuclear fusion that isn't commercially viable yet. You'd be holding onto large quantities of water for a long time, as they already were.
FWIU evaporation doesn't work because Tritium/He3 crawls up the walls of the container it was in, because gravity.
Presumably nuclear research scientists have already considered centrifugation, titration, pressure / heat / boiling and other phase state transitions, Laser Nuclear Transmutation (*), reuse in a reactor with TPBAR rods designed to collect Tritium for later processing, and as fuel for peaceful civilian e.g. a D-T + (He3, He4) nuclear fusion electricity generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant > Tritium production (w/ TPBAR rods and waste casks that aren't yet repurposed for fusion research)
Fusion that takes heavy water as an input e.g. at a first stage facility that processes radioactive material and yields nonradioactives for a 'second stage' (?) facility would be great.
FWIU, that is what Helion does; though there aren't yet separate stages.
Do old casks of heavy water (dangerous nuclear waste from an old-gen nuclear reactor) contain significant amounts of recoverable Helium-3 due to the 12.3 year typical (*) half-life of Tritium?
Again, Helium-3 is a viable nonradioactive input to nuclear fusion reactions.
there are hundreds like it,
I didn't check if they are storing it as a compressed gas but they probably do. 1500 psi is about 100 bar. No more a cube but still a very big array of 28.3 m tall tanks.
> The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, is a strategic reserve of the United States, which once held over 1 billion cubic meters (about 170,000,000 kg)[a] 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[2] reservoir. The reserve was established with the enactment of the Helium Act of 1925. The strategic supply provisioned the noble gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Cold War and Space Race.
I for one am in favor of keeping it as a national resource in order to prevent the development of a zeppelin capability gap between us and the enemy.
EDIT:
I appreciate the rebuttals below, apparently Helium is important in the usage and production of MRI, IC fabrication, and cooling nuclear reactors. Pushes a reconsideration of the sell off, plus the possible resurgance of steampunk.
they are saying that like there isn't a cold war or space race in the year 2023
This was one of the big issues at the start of the Ukraine invasion because they're one of the world's preeminent suppliers.
The big problem is that there's a finite supply - it comes mostly from natural gas wells - and it's running out. Being lighter than air it just goes up and into space. Once we're out, we're out.
https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of...
And why the price to filly party baloons has gone up 10x over the last 10-20 years..
Not exactly. Helium is a part of radioactive decay and as such continuously produced, so in a pinch we might use filters in the air from nuclear plants or large deposits of radioactive minerals as an alternative source. The question is just how much can be produced that way.
Not nearly enough
To keep up with demand, you'd need so much nuclear energy that the thermal byproduct would boil the oceans within a year or two.
I think it's safe to say that's not a desirable outcome. Once we're out, we're out.
According to [2], in a given year, 160 million m³ of helium is extracted across the planet. This rate of extraction is 180x the replenishment rate.
According to [2], there are at least 12061 million m³ of helium reserves known to exist and have been measured/estimated.
The timeframes for depleting this precious resource are incredibly short. The known 12061 million m³ of helium reserves, making the very generous assumption it can all be economically extracted, will be depleted by 2096.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41247-020-00072-5
[2] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-helium.pdf
That one was actually neon. It has nothing to do with natural gas; it's a byproduct of the cryogenic distillation of air, which steelmakers do on an industrial scale to get pure oxygen. As you point out, here's not much helium in the Earth's atmosphere; rather, since it (helium-4) is the product of alpha decay of geologic thorium and uranium, it accumulates in the same kind of places as natural gas. Hence: Texas.
There was a large HN thread on the neon thing here,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30457490 (422 comments)
[1] https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/War-Ukraine...
- "The helium shutdown in Arzew [Algeria] is a result of high natural gas demand in Europe, due in large part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Helium is found alongside natural gas in conventional wells. Algeria normally compresses natural gas into liquid form at Arzew for global transport by ship. During that process, it’s economical to extract helium because it liquefies at much higher pressures and lower temperatures than natural gas, explains industrial gas consultant Jon Raquet."
- "But now, much of Algeria’s natural gas is being sent to Spain via pipeline, making separation impractical."
The shifting mentioned in the article is further knock-on effects of the war and its impact on energy markets - and how those further constrain the global supply chain for He.
This isn't my area of expertise though so please do let me know if I've misunderstood.
Right about gas, but it doesn't follow that they've invested in infrastructure to cryogenically separate helium from gas fields, the way they did with neon (at steel plants). (That was the colorful thing about the neon crisis: every country in the world has enormous neon resources; the list of countries that can produce industrial amounts on <6 months notice is short).
I looked it up: Ukraine doesn't export any helium (as of 2019 public data), and it has helium production capacity but it's marginal. Algeria is world #3, behind the USA and Qatar.
https://www.deutsche-rohstoffagentur.de/DE/Gemeinsames/Produ... (pages 69 and 71)
I think you mean ~28 (2 times ~14).
Even if there's plenty left in the ground.
So I'd imagine that reduction of extraction would also reduce access to helium.
It’s the main fuel used to power electrical plants in the US (all those Teslas generally run on LNG).
It’s also a fuel that doesn’t have a single source supplier. It’s Quatar, Russia, etc.
All these folks talking about reducing gas use and ending global warning by reducing consumption are not looking at this objectively and geopolitically. They see it through the lens of contemporary American environmental politics.
Up until 5-10 years ago natural gas was seen as the major reduction factor in the drop in coal usage and generally a win for the environment compared to continuing to use coal. It was the “better” fuel for the transition.
Obviously we are going to move towards more renewable fuels in future because coming into balance with nature is necessary. But it’s unlikely it’s going anywhere anytime soon and behind closed doors, I think energy policy clearly points to gas as the “lesser of evils” energy source for the foreseeable near future.
In a "it is literally possible to extract all of it and it will escape to space" sense, yes. But in a practical "humans are anywhere remotely close to exhausting helium deposits on Earth" sense, no. The "we are running out helium" thing was never real.
The supply is going to become very strategic when we run out of helium for MRI machines and other important superconducting equipment, scientific or otherwise.
We may develop suitable lower temperature superconductors, but there are thousands of MRIs that still need it, and plenty of medical centers that won't be able to afford to upgrade to new systems.
Also: liquid fueled rockets and space systems. Being able to nuke the other guy or space supremacy depends upon having helium. Maybe not that much.
It's not just about pressurizing the liquid fuels for main engines. It's a purging gas; it can be used to pressurize RCS systems where other approaches are less practical; etc etc etc.
Is this actually the case anymore? I had the vague idea that fancy modern superconductors now allowed these to run on liquid nitrogen.
Short of a quench (catastrophic heating, effectively) the most modern units hardly lose any, and often need less in the first place. An old machine might cost you near 6fig/year in helium refill, especially if out of spec. Some new magnets don't typically need any in a give year.
So the largest high-temp MRI for now is only big enough to image the head. That being said, there has been a lot of progress in the high-TC superconductors in the recent years.
Seems a bit short sighted to close the helium reserve and sell it off. The last 3 years have taught the value of having some slack in the supply chain.
They sell hugely valuable public assets to some private entity, which then sells it back (or lease or rent) to the government over the years, at a huge premium
There are usually some kickbacks, and/or indirect ownership through partners/shell companies involved
They've done this with a lot of things in the UK and now we have crumbling buildings and billionaire politicians.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Privatization_Act_of_...
At the same time, we’ve had regulatory capture in a bunch of industries for decades and it seems there isn’t much the public can really do about it
The public being able to see what’s going on, for months/years/decades doesn't necessarily mean they are ok with it, it might just mean they are powerless
So what are my options?
Trust in the market forces to self regulate?
Let Jesus take the wheel?
Leave it to beaver?
They all seems about equally realistic.
Every choice we make in life impacts and "controls" the future, by choice or not
I'd argue it's one of the ideals of living a worthwhile life
https://www.google.com/search?q=world+helium+shortage
Why are the least knowledgeable about a topic the most certain of their uninformed opinions about it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Modern_extraction_and_d...
It's a popular misconception, with a kernel of truth, but the kernel is very, very small: hydrogen and helium are light enough that they are not gravitationally bound to our planet. In other words, if you release some helium in the atmosphere, in time it will eventually escape to space.
While this is true, it's also irrelevant. Once you release a gas into the atmosphere, it's economically lost. It does not matter if it stays in the atmosphere forever, or it makes its way to the larger Universe. For example neon. Or kripton. Or chlorine for that matter.
Separately, there is plenty of helium in natural gas fields. We extract about 4 trillion cubic meters of gas per year. Natural gas contains between 0.01% and 7% helium. At the lower end, we pull out of the ground 400 million cubic meters of helium per year, but we simply don't bother to separate it. This is more than three times the entire Federal Helium reserve.
Now, if you read the article, you'll find out that this Federal Helium reserve is being sold as per a law enacted in 2013. Why did Congress pass such a law? I don't know, but presumably they have looked into the issue and determined that it's worth their time to bring it to the floor and hold a vote on it. The original helium reserve was instituted before WW2, when dirigibles were a thing, and the US was concerned with the Nazi Germany's lead in this particular technology. After WW2 though, dirigibles are only a curiosity here and there. Helium is not a strategic resource anymore.
wikipedia has the answers. tl;dr it sounds like both of those things: the reserve was in debt and was depressing the market for helium.
A public service (which is what a federal stockpile IS) cannot be in dept.
Can't wait until "fiscal responsibility" types are trying to sell off the justice department to the highest bidder because it "is in debt"
but that's different to being in debt. a public service can absolutely be in debt. it's given a budget, and if it fails to operate within that budget it goes into debt. that might mean the budget is too low, but there's always a point where a service is no longer worth the budget it would take to keep it operating. (not making a judgement on the helium reserve - i really have no context for how necessary or useful it is)
> “To put this discovery into perspective, global consumption of helium is about 8 billion cubic feet (BCf) per year and the United States Federal Helium Reserve, which is the world’s largest supplier, has a current reserve of just 24.2 BCf,” said University of Oxford’s Chris Ballentine, a professor with the Department of Earth Sciences.
I’d note this is only enough for 7 years of consumption. I’m not sure what kind of game changer that is.
Both figures absolutely pale in comparison to how much we throw out because it's not profitable but the fossil fuels it's in are, but that's nothing new.
C'mon guys, I was reading that 240 page government contract!
I am saying it's ignorant to imply that the helium isn't important because it was originally secured for zeppelins.
They may have been trying to sell it before, but the lack of leadership on a critical resource like this is a bad sign.
I've never heard of this, can you link to something discussing this?
I guess GP is attributing the cost of the MRI to the helium required to cool the magnet, but I'm not sure that's a big fraction of the amortized cost for a single procedure -- a reference would be good.
"Despite news reports in October that the world is running out of helium, clinical MRI units throughout the U.S. were and remain unaffected."
I wouldn't be surprised if some patients are given bad info by either clinic or insurer. Blaming a global shortage, real or perceived, points the patient's emotional response away from the provider.
I've had an MRI (and had to do the prerequisite 6 weeks of PT).
The MRI is a huge machine. It's in its own room, and they have to be careful about allowing any metal too close to it. The scan itself took about an hour for a couple of different views, a tech had to get my body in the right position and support it with various pads and pillows. You cannot move at all, and if you do, they have to start over. Given the time for the scan itself, plus any setup and cleaning they might have to do, I'd guess one machine could do a dozen or so scans per day. At the hospital I went to, they only did scans two days per week, I don't know if that was because they had limited staff or they need to allow for maintenance/calibration of the machine. Also I had a scan with contrast, and the doc who did the contrast injection also had limited availability.
So there are real limits on the supply of MRI time, my guess is that this drives the price more than anything. It's not like an X-ray that just takes a few minutes.
I'm in London, a MRI here starts at around ~250 pounds or ca. $315.
Meanwhile $20k worth of helium replacement would be ~$55/day spread across all uses of the machine.
So I'm inclined to think you're right.
The more likely reason for the 6 week PT:
Most things for which you as a patient might want an MRI for that aren't obviously not something physio will help with are things you will end up needing physio for.
I'm assuming they've done a simple cost benefit analysis where the proportion of cases where they actually need MRI's are low enough that it's cheaper to just send people straight to physio first.
Of course if you're an athlete at the major college or professional level, you can get one immediately.
I got a whole-body MRI in New York. It was under $1,000.
Post the prices that your insurance provider paid to the hospital for a real comparison.
Prices here do vary a lot, and you certainly can end up paying 10x that price for a full body scan from an expensive provider with a bunch of extras (though judging by a couple, some of those extras are cheap/"free" (on the NHS) blood tests tacked on for no good reason other than to jack up the price).
[You can get full scans for significantly less too, at least down to $1300 - I haven't looked very thoroughly -, but most people opting for full body scans are not doing so to address a specific known issue, so the prices reflect that it's a luxury service that's rarely needed, and the price lists are full of pointless upsells]
If the 10x is for specific body parts, it might pay to take a short trip to do your MRI's rather than pay out of pocket where you are then.
It can be a lot more than 20k but you are correct it isn't the driving cost.
NBC: “The world is running out of helium. Here's why doctors are worried.” https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-d...
Radiological Society of North America: “Keeping An Eye on the Potential Shortage of Helium for MRIs” https://www.rsna.org/news/2023/january/helium-shortage-for-m...
The Harvard Crimson: “Helium Shortage Forces Harvard Physics Labs to Shut Down Equipment, Suspend Projects” https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/6/24/helium-shortage...
Marketplace: “Party City’s Bankruptcy partly due to high cost of helium” https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/19/heliums-been-rising-i...
(I tore my ACL in March and opted for physical therapy instead of surgery. My knee feels like it’s at 100% and PT tests show no difference in performance between my knees. I’m interested in seeing the degree to which there has been healing, if at all. I self-paid for my initial MRI back in April as well. It would have been more expensive through insurance!)
Your complaint is that you think for-profit hospitals should be gifted the helium rather than having to purchase it?
In 1979, in the midst of one of the many energy crisis in the 70s, the Shah of Iran said “oil is too valuable to burn." We've lucked out that we haven't run out of helium yet, but there is no guarantee we will continue to be lucky. The subcomments of this comment [2] explain the very real peril and concern.
To your point "Your complaint is that you think for-profit hospitals should be gifted the helium rather than having to purchase it?", I would respond: Helium should be priced based on the end use as well as any systems in place to recover and recycle [3] [4], vs temporary use where it will quickly be vented to space, lost to us forever.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393338
[3] https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/new-liquid-helium-recycl...
[4] https://pharmacy.ucsf.edu/news/2021/06/helium-recycling-proj...
In the helium case in the US, my understanding is that from 1996 to 2013, though the US was the dominant global supplier and _could_ have chosen to act as a cartel, the 1996 legislation fixed prices to be artificially low (with the aim of merely paying off costs, rather than maximizing revenue), which is claimed to have disincentivized private parties from developing new production capacity.
I'm not some free-market zealot who thinks the invisible hand can do no evil. But in this case, if the problem is that (a) there's currently a bottleneck upstream of important healthcare cases and (b) we want to discourage waste then we should want helium to leave the national reserve (i.e. there's more supply available to hospitals and other parties), and we should want that to be at a reasonable price so it isn't used frivolously (e.g. we wouldn't want party planners to be induced to use more balloons just b/c they're cheap). So auctioning off some of what is held in reserve seems like a reasonable action.
Wrt pricing that is presumably _lower_ for installations with recycling capabilities -- I would think that recycling might if anything make institutions willing to pay a higher volumetric price, since they get more total benefit from it. If the recycling technology is efficient and practically applicable in many contexts, more and more facilities ought to be pressured by high costs to introduce recycling ... or leave the market.
My personal opinion is the goal should be to maximize the utility of the resource, with any profits being second order effects. Instead, we too often end up like ancestors who raze the forest only to freeze to death in the winter [1].
Do you know (or perhaps someone else can chime in) -- is it even feasible currently for a medical facility with 1-2 MRI machines to put a recycling system into place? Or is the recycling system of a size and complexity that only if you have a helium footprint above a given size is it realistic? Certainly, most places would not have the expertise on staff to design and implement such a system today.
Worse, if recycling were a requirement to purchase helium, how do we estimate which medical facilities would _not_ buy an MRI machine because of the higher initial cost of the recycling system, or maintenance of its collection, compression, or purification components? How would that change patient outcomes (especially given that the initial complain about MRIs in this thread was long waits due to limited capacity)?
https://mriquestions.com/uploads/3/4/5/7/34572113/advances_i... (page 5)
> ZBO magnets allow practically unlimited system operation without helium refill.
... then is there really still any meaningful relationship between helium supply and the patient wait time for MRIs as westcort complained? Or is it just that there are too few MRI machines in the healthcare system?
And, I suppose if anyone here knows -- why is it that NMR magnets at UCLA and UCSF required recycling systems which sound meaningfully less efficient (the UCLA article linked above reclaimed only 90%) rather than using the ZBO tech which is apparently standard in modern MRIs?
> ... then is there really still any meaningful relationship between helium supply and the patient wait time for MRIs as westcort complained? Or is it just that there are too few MRI machines in the healthcare system?
The US is second highest in number of MRI machines per capita after Japan. Its probably staffing issues or maybe MRI scans are used much more widely in the US.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnet...
I would have expected that since (in my experience) these machines are generally run by a technician, and the MRI itself is relatively quick (a few minutes), and hospitals can bill insurance thousands for an MRI, that once a medical facility has acquired and set up the machine the machine, that running patients through should more than pay for the time of staff immediately involved.
12,000 * 10,000 / 12.8 = 9,375,000/year [0]
1 cubic meter = 1,000 liters
9,375 (MRI) / 73,000,000 (Total production [1]) = 0.1284
At any point, an MRI machine contains about 2,000 liters of liquid helium, though suppliers need to replenish any helium that boils off. Mahesh estimates that an MRI machine uses 10,000 liters of liquid helium over its life span. (According to GE Healthcare, a manufacturer of the machines, that life span is 12.8 years.) In 2015, there were roughly 12,000 machines in the U.S., making MRIs one of the biggest helium consumers in the world, far above balloon stores.
0. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-d...
Helium production in the United States totaled 73 million cubic meters in 2014.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_Unite...
The helium reserve has been for sale for almost 30 years, hospitals have had plenty of opportunity to buy helium for their MRI machines. Your wait for an MRI isn't because of helium, it's because insurance providers want to avoid paying for things.
More accurately, it's because of corrupt or wildly misguided politicians that are against single payer healthcare due to bribery from established healthcare and insurance companies
In February my daughter started experiencing knee pain. Her doctor ordered an MRI and 1 week later the MRI was performed.
It's a ~1mm machine with ~10k of helium in it, and modern ones don't need much refill. Even with old ones it's expensive, but not out of whack with other costs.
The helium market isn't really the proximal cause of not having enough MRI hours to go around, but there are concerns about it getting worse.
Then why hasn't the government, with its huge helium reserve, stepped in to solve this problem?
Maybe there is some hope the helium could end up being sold to people who actually want to apply it to socially beneficial uses like this, since the government apparently has no interest in doing so?