US designates helium as a critical material
apnews.com229 points by rbanffy 2 days ago
229 points by rbanffy 2 days ago
Good interview on the subject on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast a few months back, "Now There's a Helium Shortage and It Affects More Than Balloons":
> Ripple effects from the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue to widen. There's yet another brewing shortage, this time in helium. While most people associate helium with balloons and funny voices, the element is used in a surprisingly wide variety of industrial settings, including semiconductor production, where its role in advanced lithography has been growing rapidly. But helium mining and exploration in North America has been practically non-existent for a variety of reasons. And while the US used to have a strategic helium reserve, the government started selling that down in the late 1990s. On this episode, we speak with Nicholas Snyder, the founder and CEO of North American Helium, which does helium mining in Canada. We discuss the properties of helium that make it so useful, as well as the difficulties of expanding global production and distribution.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjc6MgUY0BE
* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/now-theres-a-helium-shortage-...
* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-theres-a-helium-sh...
The US had a strategic reserve, but it was sold off:
The sale was required by law due to the the Helium Privatization Act of 1996, signed by Clinton. Amended in 2013 by the Helium Stewardship act which allowed it to be sold in an auction with funds credited to the Helium Protection Fund, signed by Obama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Privatization_Act_of_19...
1996 - Introduced by Republicans. Passed by unanimous consent in the House and Senate. [0]
2013 - Introduced by Republicans. Passed with 2 nay votes in the Senate, 1 in the House. [1]
Both parties allowed it to happen. In both cases it was veto-proof. Pointless to call out a president. Pointless to blame one party or the other. Both have overwhelming support for this.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Privatization_Act_of_19...
1: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527/...
> Pointless to call out a president.
I understand this to mean, which administration was ruling at the time, rather than that the president would be personally responsible.
This over simplifies politics.
If Trump made a gigantic fuss about something that seems inconsequential, there would be more than 2 nay votes.
The Epstein files are the counter example of this.
The position in the United States to make sure people vote aligned is called Whip.
Given the makeup of Congress, and even myself as a chem engineer, I could see this as something easy to pass.
Sometimes I think we need more involvement from the deep state and less from people with nice looking hair.
Everything about politics has to have enough footnote and caveats to make people's eyes bleed... but boiling an act down to a single person is not appropriate unless they were the champion of it, or it's intended as a placeholder for the party.
It sounded odd to me that Clinton/Obama would champion this... It felt very free-market / Republican thing to do, especially with it being called the "Privatization Act"... So I looked for more info.
Sure enough, it was introduced by Republicans... But Democrats share full blame on this if you think it's wrong... and the measure passed by so much it's almost pointless to call out the president because -- as you noted -- if the president fought it, there probably wouldn't be unanimous consent followed by 98% approval on amendment. So again: Why call out the presidents and not the party numbers except to inflame?
If anything it was giving credit to the 2013 amendment. It's funny that you're debating my relatively innocuous post when there are a number of clearly inaccurate/irrelevant politically motivated posts in this same thread.
I believe you're mireading my statements.
I am not meaning / attempting to attack you. I was curious about why two Democrat presidents were being called out on something that seemed like a republican-themed billk. Upon investigation, I saw they signed it -- yes, as you said -- but also even if they didn't sign it, or vetoed it, it would still have passed with 98 to 100% on congressional approval.
I felt this was an important fact, in our highly political time, to point out this was one of those bipartisan bills that made it through.
I could additionally add that the house and senate were Republican controlled during the initial act, so the fact it got to Clinton during split-branch control is additionally proof of the bipartisan nature... But I was attempting to be beef and fa tual, and the given information I felt was sufficient to convey this was bipartisan.
I would have preferred more facts with your initial comment. It would have saved me some research time... Since I did the extra work, I decided to share it to save someone else that effort.
Relatively innocuous? Let's call it intentionally misleading, since it looks like you created your account just to make the comment.
> This over simplifies politics.
No, it doesn't. "Passed by Clinton" and "Passed by Obama" are the statements that oversimplify politics.
> The position in the United States to make sure people vote aligned is called Whip.
That is also a gross oversimplification of our politics.
We don't have to speculate; we know the republicans' positions on privitization and selling of assets during this period.
> The 104th Congress passed the Act of Congress presenting the legislation to the United States President on September 30, 1996. President Bill Clinton enacted the federal statute into law on October 9, 1996.
> Both chambers had Republican majorities for the first time since the 83rd Congress in 1953.
People immediately trying to point fingers, it's all so tiresome. Ultimately Clinton could have vetoed but this was likely a bipartisan supported bill. Both sides of the government were generally for balancing the budget and winding down some of the excess spending and planning that went into the Cold War era mentality. The late 90s was the only time in my lifetime, I believe, that the deficit shrank. But of course, Your Team Was Responsible For All the Good Things and The Other Team Was Responsible For All the Bad Things from that era.
AFAICT US is self-sufficient in Helium, no surprise US didn't bother keeping a reserve:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-helium.pdf
> Government sales flooded the market with cheap helium, causing much of the private helium industry to shut down
Very sloppy
>The US had a strategic reserve, but it was sold off:
Yes, you can read more about that here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50249073
Meanwhile we vent 95% of extracted helium into the atmosphere as an inconvenient waste gas.
If it is so important, why aren't all our gas wells extracting that helium? It is hard for me to see this as a ploy for anything other than raising helium prices for the few companies that do extract helium.
In anything that helium is critical for, the helium cost is inconsequential compared to both the cost of the other equipment that uses it, and the value gained from using that equipment.
> If it is so important, why aren't all our gas wells extracting that helium?
Because until six months ago there was a cheap and convenient supply coming out of Persian Gulf states, and so its importance was not noticed (like so many other items that 'suddenly' became apparent when the supply was suddenly cut off).
We've been having helium shortages for years:
> The current helium shortage is the fourth to occur since 2006 and is being caused by shutdowns at several major helium producers. The shortage has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, as Russia is one of the world’s top suppliers of helium.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/6/24/helium-shortage...
I have a friend who teaches chemistry at a well known university that can no long run some labs because the equipment to run them needs, you guessed it, helium. This has been a long running problem that the Iran war has exacerbated, but is by no means the cause.
> We've been having helium shortages for years:
If it was worth (i.e., profitable) the effort to create to new supply wouldn't someone have done it by now? If no one is willing to pay for the effort, why should anyone do it at a loss?
(Isn't this, in theory, what The Market™ is all about? If people really wanted something they'd be willing to pay more for it, and it would be an incentive for more supply.)
Do you think The Market™ _won't_ mobilize in response to the price incentive?
Well, if there's a shortage as GP's 2022† article states, and the demand is 'actually' there, wouldn't the proverbial "Econ 101" response be a rise in prices? Has there been such a rise?
† I've seen articles from 2019 discussing the (alleged?) shortage.
I've heard Helium is a limited resource so if we have leaky wells here I think we should be preserving as much of that is possible, it's too bad it takes pressure from an unnecessary conflict to do the right thing here.
> I've heard Helium is a limited resource […]
I've heard the same thing about petroleum. :)
There are other sources of energy. With helium, once it's gone, there's nothing to replace it.
Well, there is; you can just wait for more helium to be produced underground. That's the same method that provided the helium we have now.
> Well, there is; you can just wait for more helium to be produced underground.
Funnily enough that seems to be the same idea for petroleum. :)
Jupiter's atmosphere is about 25% helium. And then there's the other gas giants, and the sun itself (also about a quarter helium)
We risk running out of cheap helium. But if you are willing to pay infinite money there is near-infinite helium
Right now, even with infinite money, you have no way to extract helium from Jupiter and return it to Earth. (To say nothing of the Sun!)
Maybe with a couple hundred more years of technological development...
Our moon itself is said to have ~1M tons of very valuable Helium-3 in surface deposits, but even that's nigh impossible to harvest commercially right now.
If you ask international relations scholars or people in the state department, they actually support the prevention of nuclear proliferation.
The general population typically are doves because they can't see the consequences 10-50 years out.
My PhD bud, a Bernie supporter, thinks we should have put boots on the ground by now. I generally agree.
I lived through North Korea getting nuclear weapons in my lifetime. Before they were the end of a joke, today we have to care about the opinions of that backwater. (And I read international relations structural realists as much as I drink coffee... The job of the hegemon is to maintain the status quo.)
Iran already wasn't working on nuclear weapons (a confident assessment by our intelligence community across the past 20+ years). The JCPOA then gave us the ability to verify that for ourselves. Then we (metaphorically) blew up that agreement, and (literally) blew up their leader who was firmly opposed to developing nuclear weapons, and the new one doesn't feel the same.
Iran has long said they're not working on nuclear weapons. However, they have built a large stockpile of particles of rich uranium, which is something completely useless to have unless you're planning on building nuclear weapons. This stockpile was built under the previous leader, who you are trying to claim was opposed to developing them, and yet he knew. who you are trying to claim was opposed to developing them and yet he knew. Iran didn't have nuclear weapons, however for years they were only a few weeks away from having them. They had all the hard parts in place to build one. There's a reason to think they had plenty of experts who could do it. So far as we know they never actually built one but they absolutely could and this was done under the previous leader.
> Iran has long said they're not working on nuclear weapons. However, they have built a large stockpile of particles of rich uranium, which is something completely useless to have unless you're planning on building nuclear weapons.
After the JCPOA the stockpile went to zero (esp. >5% enrichment):
* https://www.statista.com/chart/23528/irans-stockpile-of--low...
* https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/status-irans-nuclear-...
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/11/18/the-de...
One year after the US left JCPOA (during Trump 1.0) the stockpile started going up again.
They said they weren't working on nukes, and our intelligence community released assessments which agreed.
The level of enrichment they've been doing is higher than they need for power generation but it also isn't nearly enough to make nukes. A more reasonable explanation (given the assessments they aren't working on nukes) is that they were being deliberately provocative.
> So far as we know they never actually built one but they absolutely could and this was done under the previous leader
Right, they could, and didn't. Why? It was only 7 years from the discovery of fission to a proof of concept in the form of the trinity test. Either you assume a level of incompetence entirely divorced from Iran's efficacy on the international stage, or you accept they weren't trying.
>It also isn't nearly enough to make nukes
Enrichment % is very misleading. Natural is about 0.7%. 3.5% is halfway to 90%. The distance from 60% to 90% is tiny.
That's because the distance is calculated using the quantity of raw material that needs to be filtered and not the enrichment percent, the more pure, the less material needed, hence smaller distance to 90%.
>Right, they could, and didn't. Why?
Some people worked hard to ensure the latter would be very inadvisable for Iran. Being so close isn't a stable equilibrium though.
That's a common misconception. You can't make the calculation purely on the mass of raw material needed to get a X kg of Y% material.
Every enrichment process drops in efficiency as the enrichment increases, asymptotically approaching that process's enrichment ceiling.
That's why nobody uses thermal diffusion to enrich uranium: It's by far the easiest method (you can do it with 1800's technology), but the practical maximum enrichment fraction is too low for anything useful (other than providing feedstock to better enrichment processes).
That's also the reason a centrifuge enrichment plant uses warehouses full of cascaded centrifuges: The centripetal force inside the centrifuge is working against a diffusion gradient, so each stage only gives a small percentage decrease of the "derichment" fraction.
Once you pass 50%, you stop looking for U-235 needles in a haystack to keep and start looking for U-238 needles in a haystack to throw away.
Ah but the geniuses Trump and Netanyahu assassinated the Iranian leader who had issued a fatwa banning nukes as unislamic so now all bets are off.
I like that he had banned nukes in 2003 but for some reason, Iran covertly construction Fordow starting in 2006. I guess he was just not as Supreme of a leader as he thought he was, somehow all those people just decided to hollow out a mountain and install centrifuges there.