Helium is not a renewable resource,
at least not on any human timescale.
It's not a fossil fuel, but it is
made very slowly by radioactive decay
deep down in the ground.
So in terms of managing it, we should
be treating it like a fossil fuel.
Once it's pulled up from the ground, used,
and dispersed into the atmosphere,
it is ludicrously expensive to recover.
And over time, that dispersed helium is
light enough and unreactive enough that
eventually, very, very slowly,
it escapes off into space,
which is a problem
because helium is enormously useful.
We use it in all sorts
of science and medicine,
to keep the magnets in MRI machines cool,
in manufacturing processes,
and, yes, to inflate
blimps and party balloons.
And over the last decade or so,
there have been a lot of
breathless news articles
proclaiming that the world
is running out of helium.
A lot of the world's helium comes from
under the Great Plains of the USA.
And here in Amarillo, Texas,
the US government
has the National Helium Reserve.
At least, they do for now.
- We're standing on top of the
Bush Dome,
the reservoir that acts as the
storage reservoir,
which is approximately 3,500 feet
underground.
As a sponge absorbs water and
holds that water in the sponge,
similarly, the small pores in the rock
are spaces where the helium can reside.
It's solid rock to the eye,
but it is porous
and allows the gas to be stored
very efficiently underground.
This reservoir was a
natural gas reservoir.
It was depleted, then recharged
in the sixties
with 32 billion cubic feet of helium
into the ground.
So it's actually helium that
we've injected previously
that we're extracting now.
The whole program was to conserve
the helium for about 100 years
of the consumption rate then.
Of course, helium has become such a
popular element, it has so many uses,
that now, that rate is quite a bit more
than originally estimated.
That helium has been withdrawn
over approximately 15 years.
And we are now reaching
the end of our program
as the field is declining in pressure.
Helium is notoriously known for being
able to escape through any small opening.
It's used as a leak detection substance.
You can detect helium very easily.
And if it's able to get out, you have a hole
somewhere in that device or product.
By putting it back in the ground,
it's not leaking out
of a stainless steel
container or a big truck,
it's easily monitored and controlled.
- The plant here is in its annual
week of maintenance right now,
which is one of the reasons
I'm allowed to get quite this close.
There are still parts I'm not
allowed to show you, though.
- The equipment behind me is
actually an enrichment unit.
All that gas that was stored in
the ground has mixed and blended
with natural gas from the field, and
it's no longer in an enriched state.
So by bringing it through the equipment,
we take that gas back up to
approximately 80% purity of helium,
about 20% impurity of nitrogen.
That's what we produce and send up
our 425-mile pipeline
to the private helium plants
that then take it to 100%.
There are places in the world that are
running out of helium, that's correct.
But there's still approximately
80 to 100 years' worth
of known helium reserves
in the United States, in Wyoming.
So to say that we're running out of
helium is actually a little bit incorrect.
There's still a lot of helium available
and new helium sources being found.
With the recent increases
in the helium price,
that's actually stimulated industry
to go look for more helium resources.
And they have found more.
So we expect that
in the next few years,
more of this helium
will be brought to market.
And the shortage will be alleviated,
at least for a short period of time.
- Running out of something on
our current planetary scale
doesn't mean there suddenly
won't be any at all.
It just means that the price of what's left
will rise higher and higher and higher
until the lower supply meets
lower demand,
which might make some more
difficult to reach reservoirs of helium
under the ground worth exploring.
That's capitalism.
Because of all that uncertainty,
the price of helium
has been fluctuating a lot
over the last few years.
And researchers are often having
trouble finding enough money
to keep their experiments going.
And yes, it's why filling party balloons
is getting really expensive.
- We are now in the final
two years of our program
and facing the last part of
our privatization effort.
By the year 2021, we will be
stepping out of the helium activity
and transferring it to private entities.
Surprisingly enough, the question
comes up about whether or not
we should be using party balloons.
I happen to be a real
fan of party balloons.
So for my preference, I still am glad
that we have party balloons.
With the price of helium where it is,
there's so much conservation going on now
that the party balloons are actually
a very small part of the market.
We've seen now in recent years
with the newer helium sources
coming online and this great
effort towards helium conservation
that that's really had an impact in
making more helium available for everyone.
So I think the party balloons
kind of got a bad rap.
- I did think about ending this video by
delivering my conclusion in a silly voice
by breathing from a helium balloon, but
honestly, we do need to conserve helium
and I figured that
would set a bad example.
So this...
...it's just regular air.
I'm glad that flew away! That would've
looked terrible if it hadn't worked.
