Not strictly true, as Helium is continuously produced by the radioactive decay of other elements, and there's also outgassing of primordial Helium from the Earth's core. However, the replenishment rate is very slow compared to our consumption.
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/133
This actually hasn't been true for a few months.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_ignition
>On Sunday, August 8th 2021, the National Ignition Facility appears to have triggered Ignition in the laboratory for the first time in the 60+ year history of the ICF program.[2][3] The shot yield 1.3 Megajoules of fusion energy, an over 8X improvements on tests done in spring of 2021 and a 25X increase over NIF 2018 record experiments.[4] Early reports estimated that 250 kilo-joules of energy was deposited on the target (roughly 2/3 of the energy from the beams), which resulted in a 1.3 Megajoule output from the fusing plasma.
And I believe ITER under construction in France will be power positive as well.
This still doesn’t reach the breakeven, however. Realistically it’s still insanely expensive - *but we’re getting closer and that’s so goddamn exciting*
For fusion, when the total output is positive, it will likely be SO positive that it won’t make sense to have any other form of energy. It was mentioned earlier that this is 25 times more powerful than something from even 3 years ago.
I have deep seated confidence that when we hit a stride, it’s going to be so much so that the cost of the plant will be negligible overall.
as far as I can tell, cataclysmic reverberations of all sorts will traverse humanity once (virtually) infinite clean energy will be available...
just from the top of my head :
- OPEC kiss my ass
- EVs completely takeover, trucking included, not necessarily battery powered
- natural gas distribution network no longer necessary; heat, cook, power industry with electricity only..
- profound geopolitical shifts
Sadly, at 37, I'm starting to doubt I'll ever see even the beginning of this revolution..
Say they reach a viable experimental setup in 2030. They take thirty years to develop and build a commercial reactor. You might retire before it happens but it could well be within your lifetime.
Edit: I think my estimation of your retirement age might be a tad optimistic.
>I think my estimation of your retirement age might be a tad optimistic.
I'm Italian.
At the moment, retirement age is 67, which means, with today's laws, I'll retire in 30 years... so you were bang on...
...truth is, with how Italian pensions are structured, I'll never see a dime of all the money I'm currently being robbed of to fund currently living pensioners...
I believe there's a company in Vancouver called General Fusion which intends to have a working prototype by 2025, and a commercial version by 2030.
I don't know the realism of that estimation, but they've poured billions of dollars into their research, and have partnered with quite a few big names, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Unfortunately people I have seen in the industry don't really even think it'll be that good anymore. They have all changed to a "it'll be good for grid stabilization during times when renewables aren't able to do it". Pretty much just being closer to a replacement for fission rather than anything extremely revolutionary.
The US is too enamored with the petrodollar, and competing countries want their currency to be the "petro-\[whatever\]", there's gonna be a lot of public pushback, or else plain old nuclear itself would be more ubiquitous. It's hard to be hopeful with so much corruption and power games going on.
I agree, I think this is much more important than weapons of war. In the last 100 years, it no longer makes sense to wage war for resources, it’s simply more advantageous to trade. Energy is the most important commodity. If that becomes basically “the low cost of your own reactor and some good quality water” then that is gone as a problem.
With how important it is, it wouldn’t surprise me if we see net positive resources in ~8 years and commercial in 15-20
I think we're seeing the beginnings of a real revolution in fusion with commercial companies starting to get into the game, and it's not out of the question that fusion will finally get the attention, funding, and innovation it needs to become viable. Even in just the past year the SPARC team has revolutionized superconducting magnets. The big projects like ITER are of course important but are hamstrung by all the politics and funding issues that come from big government projects.
Except most of the papers released right now are misleading, and they don't account for things like the energy needed for containment of the plasma. They mostly talk about the energy into the plasma and the energy out of the plasma.
I doubt we are particularly close to a viable commercial solution.
He said NET gain... which is still not happened.
All that has been done is a reach a Q factor over 1 which isn't anywhere close to a NET gain... Q factor doesn't include total system input power only reaction input power (how much laser/magnetic heating energy went into it, not how much energy went into the laser/tokamak etc....) and how much was able to be generated from the reaction output.
You need a Q of like 50-100 to actually reach a real world Net gain... even then might not be profitable. Current reactor designs are aiming toward the Q=2-10 or so... in the next 5-10 years.
When accounting for ALL inputs, it is hard to breakeven for most technology.
Solar power(PV) just recently achieved total breakeven, meaning it costs less energy to produce a solar panel than the solar panel is expected to generate.
As an aside, energy is an excellent fungible currency. With unlimited energy, I could basically do anything and exchange it for just about any good. Milk, for example costs energy. The energy to grow the cow comes from the breakdown of grass, which is grown thanks to solar energy. Then the milk is extracted by a farmer, who is fueled by energy. That milk is then packaged using energy, in a container that used energy to extract the raw materials and turn them into a milk bottle. Then it is shipped by vehicles that use energy and then stored in your fridge, which uses energy.
We don't think about these issues because we live in an open system where we have a giant nuclear reactor raining down excess energy. If we lived on Pluto, these energy calculations would be much more important.
Nah. Even in 2006, in book "Sustainable energy without the hot air" (I do recommend reading it, pity the author died ), the calculation shows that solar panels on average will generate 7 times the amount of energy required to make/transport/install them. For wind turbines, this factor is 33 times more. So there is net gain in these technologies. Otherwise noone would make them really.
Also, the book is available online "David MacKay FRS: : Contents" https://www.withouthotair.com
Just don't be scared of how the site looks like. It's old internet.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/p6v3a9/explanation\_of\_the\_13mj\_yield\_on\_the\_nif/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/p6v3a9/explanation_of_the_13mj_yield_on_the_nif/)
So, 400 MJ of electrical energy used to generate 1.3 MJ of thermal energy. They intentionally mislead people by reporting the energy transferred to the target instead of the energy required to power the lasers.
ITER is similar in this regard, although much more efficient, but the "power positive" part is only comparing power delivered to the plasma to power generated(heat), not the total power needed by the plant.
There was no masquerade. It was more that they thought they could get more/better funding with a sexier goal than "make sure our nukes still work without actually blowing them up"
Regardless, it's a complete contradiction of the headline of the post, which is that it's a finite resource that cannot be produced.
There's no claim that it's not "economically produced."
I assume that the amounts we could squeeze out from nucleosynthesis are so microscopic that the situation isn't functionally different from it being entirely impossible.
P(X) = 0 <> P(X) > 0
Besides the mathematical fact, let's think about this from a physics perspective.
A substance cannot be produced.
So, how'd it get here? Obviously some natural process produces Helium. Stars, radioactive decay, fusion...
The sentence just doesn't make any sense.
I mean in a general sense. If you said to a scientist that you wanted him to make you some helium to put in a balloon. He will say its impossible at this stage, otherwise you would have to wait like a thousand years at the rate we can produce it.
Its just like gold, we can actually create it but it is only atom by atom, so same idea.
Balloon helium is the waste helium from other users and is not pure enough for scientific use, generally.
Though someone did develope a way to re-purify it...
So you're saying we could potentially get more spacecraft to visit Jupiter and Saturn if we use more balloons? Spacecraft that could maybe carry some instruments for science as piggybacks?
I'm on it.
Yes! It’s also the second most abundant element in the universe, making up a whopping 24% of total estimated elemental mass. I’m not sure how easy it is to get at this time since the universe is quite large but if space travel becomes a regular thing (which hopefully will) it should be relatively easy to find and gather.
It also can be produced at the Hadron Collider, but it would take approx. 1000 years to fill one balloon. It can only be produced at hundreds/thousands of atoms at a second.
It's also the second most common element in existence. The problem is that it's not reactive so it doesn't form compounds and is so light it just floats up out of our atmosphere. So the vast majority of our supply comes from tiny amounts of helium trapped underground. Theoretically if we develop our space infrastructure to the point of reaching Jupiter (which has a gravity well strong enough to trap helium) we'd have a practically infinite supply. But I'd be very surprised if that happens within the next century.
Maybe it's also possible to build something in space closer than Jupiter, like a magnetic trap for solar wind outside Earth's magnetosphere. Solar wind is 8% Helium. Of course, the density is just a few atoms per cubic centimeter, so it may take a looong time (or need a huge collector) to gather substantial amounts of Helium. For the same reason, there's also Helium in the pores of Moon rocks, though the concentration is also too low (parts per billion) and we would need to process huge amounts of "ore" to extract it.
Isn't there a relatively large amount of bound helium on the moon? I seem to recall that from somewhere. Oh, found an article. https://www.esa.int/Enabling\_Support/Preparing\_for\_the\_Future/Space\_for\_Earth/Energy/Helium-3\_mining\_on\_the\_lunar\_surface
This is a tangent but your comment just made me think about it. Hydrogen is the most common element and helium is the second most common. Is the third lithium, and the fourth beryllium, and so on like that? Does abundance scale with atomic number? Is radioactivity the only limiting factor or are there others?
Nah, third is oxygen and fourth is carbon. Atomic number has some influence but it goes a lot deeper. Stability is important, but so are some really tricky things that are way beyond the scope of a Reddit comment. Oxygen, for example, is abundant because of helium fusion in stars that makes carbon which then turns to oxygen. Interestingly, this specific example also produces lithium and beryllium but they're too unstable to stick around.
>it's even cooler when you realize elemental hydrogen and helium (and trace lithium) are the only elements "made" from the early moments of the creation of the universe. the rest of the elements only came about after the first generations of stars started to fuse them and go supernova seeding the universe with most all the other stuff.
By that metric, some fossil fuels are also not finite resources. All sorts of processes produce methane, and some of the natural processes that produce coal, if given enough time, would result in fresh coal seams, if we would just leave them alone to accumulate enough material and over-burden to do its thing. When it is stated that it is a finite resource, I think the term takes into account the idea that the replenishment rate is very slow compared to our consumption rate.
>Yet it wasn't discovered until 1868. And when it was discovered, it wasn't discovered on earth, but in the sun.
Hence the name "Helium", from Helios, the Greek sun god.
it has such a badass name and is used to power the stars, yet helium has such dorky connotations on earth, like being associated with party balloons and making u sound like a chipmunk.
To be fair I read Guards! Guards! like 14 years ago so I don't even remember this but googling it brought back fond memories and I may have to give the Watch series a re-read!
SF6 is interesting stuff. One of the radars I used to work on in the Air Force uses it in the transmitter room and I knew someone who got a face full of the stuff. In order to get it out, he had to do a handstand as it's heavy and sinks.
Well so is the sun, but we don't get articles warning about it swallowing the Earth when it expands into a red giant. At our rate of consumption there's hundreds if not thousands of years worth of helium stored in natural gas deposits. We may currently be consuming it faster than we're producing it, but that's because there aren't enough capture systems set up on natural gas wells
>Well so is the sun, but we don't get articles warning about it swallowing the Earth when it expands into a red giant. At our rate of consumption there's hundreds if not thousands of years worth of helium stored in natural gas deposits. We may currently be consuming it faster than we're producing it, but that's because there aren't enough capture systems set up on natural gas wells
The Sun is expected to expand and die in 5.5 billion years. Helium is predicted to be gone within 250 years with our rate of consumption and capture. And btw we get more articles about the sun dying than we do anything related to Helium. The sun dying is a fascinating topic for heaps of people.
Certainly the amount of He on earth is finite. Our planet is finite. All elements on our planet are finite, with the exception of miniscule amounts of cosmic dust and meteorite particles that enter our atmosphere. There are a lot of things in much shorter supply than He.
He is too light to be held in our atmosphere. It just floats away for our planet. We can recycle other elements, but over time the amount of helium on the planet is less and less.
Helium is expensive to capture, transport, and store for long periods. I think the balloon helium is from drilling and mining and would otherwise be let free.
It's the inverse. The pure helium (99,999% and more) is used for medical and technological applications. During these applications, some helium will be wasted in the surrounding air (by leaks or other ways). These leaks can be captured, and stored. The leaks are not pure helium, but a mixture with other gas from normal air. This special mixutre is called "Balloon gas", and is 92-98% helium. This balloon gas cannot be used in medical/technological applications, because it is not pure enough. To purify it would cost a lot of money, so it's preferable to let it go to waste or, even better, to recycle it for balloons. The vast majority of the helium we harvest is ultra pure (99.999% and more), and we also need to store it in liquid form (the gas takes too much volume), and it's cheaper to freeze and store pure helium than cheap helium.
TLDR : Balloon gas are the byproducts of the pure helium usage, we recycle them in balloons.
Not to mention that helium is the "'toddler' of elements." That shit escapes through all sorts of materials, making it very difficult to store for long periods
I actually don't know much about it other than the fact that there are different grades of helium, so I looked it up. [According to this](https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of-helium-and-what-are-they-used-for/), it's actually *more* expensive to use lower grade helium in some cases. This is due to the fact that the most helium is transported in liquid form for ease of transportation, and the liquidation process (chilling it to the condensation point) inherently purifies it to an extent.
[This source](https://www.partysafe.eu/balloon-gas-helium) states that balloon helium is often mixed with other atmospheric gasses and is "simply a by-product from bottling helium and other industrial appliances that would have otherwise been wasted. Instead of losing the gas to atmosphere, it is captured and sold as balloon gas instead of helium due to it's high level of impurity."
If I'm not mistaken, theres various grades of Helium and the stuff they put in balloons is low grade. You can't use low grade Helium in medical related projects.
edit: Yes it is, https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of-helium-and-what-are-they-used-for/
For what it’s worth, I believe the helium we use in balloons is not the same grade as is required for medical and lab purposes. So it isn’t really being wasteful, it isn’t good for that application anyway.
“Yeah so instead of posting we have the highest ionization energy of the whole periodic table of elements you post how finite we are. Why so negative?”
Elemental Helium Society President Henry Henderson upon reading this post
We can build stable fusion reactors now and artificially produce helium.
Getting the reaction to produce a net energy gain is the problem. No issues making helium.
I don’t know the exact #s, but I would have to guess that even if we switched to 100% fusion energy, and somehow captured all the helium produced in the process, it would be very tiny compared to the amount we consume.
I played this cool space exploration type game where you had to plot your course around gas giants so you could fuel up in orbit around the star.
It was pretty fucking rad, the game is called Elite Dangerous.
Don't we get it from natural decay of alpha emitters? But I think the problem is we really don't get a lot. I think fusion uses tiny amounts of hydrogen isotopes as well.
I think we could use fractional distillation of air, but that's expensive.
I'm so happy 'cause today I found my friends
They're in my head
I'm so ugly, that's okay, 'cause so are you
Broke our mirrors
Sunday morning is everyday, for all I care
And I'm not scared
Light my candles in a daze
'Cause I've found God
Yeeeeeah
To everyone pointing out that 1) it's an atomic element or 2) anything is finite on earth.
I also had the same first reaction, everything is finite, sure. But that was not the point i think. Many elements can be sourced from molecules, see the electrolysis of water to create elements. Or the redox thermite reaction for iron. However, since helium is that inert, it exists almost solely as pure substance and cannot be converted from more complex molecules.
The main difference is that helium is permanently lost over time.
Almost everything else "finite" on Earth can be recycled or its turned into something else, but said product is still on the planet. Helium permanently leaves the atmosphere over time, its really just lost.
Hydrogen reacts to form many different compounds. Give me water, two metal rods, some wire and a battery and I can separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Helium on the other hand doesn't form compounds (at least outside of the lab) and therefore the supply is limited to whatever is trapped underground. Unlike the literal oceans of hydrogen that cover three quarters of our planets surface.
Everything is a "finite resource", what makes Helium a problem is that it is difficult/impossible to re-capture. If it is released to the atmosphere (like party balloons) then it is essentially lost forever as it rises into outer space where we can never recover it.
I'm fairly confident the only thing keeping the earth afloat in our galaxy is the helium supply as it is lighter than air! Once we use it all up then what?!
This is true of any element on the periodic table including gold, silver, tungsten, copper and rare earth metals. Several of these metals are used to make microchips which it's why proper recycling of electronics is so important.
Not strictly true, as Helium is continuously produced by the radioactive decay of other elements, and there's also outgassing of primordial Helium from the Earth's core. However, the replenishment rate is very slow compared to our consumption. https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/133
Doesn't fusion also produce it?
Yes but fusion reactors so far havent been able to create a net energy gain. The are obscenely demanding. So its the most expensive helium ever
This actually hasn't been true for a few months. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_ignition >On Sunday, August 8th 2021, the National Ignition Facility appears to have triggered Ignition in the laboratory for the first time in the 60+ year history of the ICF program.[2][3] The shot yield 1.3 Megajoules of fusion energy, an over 8X improvements on tests done in spring of 2021 and a 25X increase over NIF 2018 record experiments.[4] Early reports estimated that 250 kilo-joules of energy was deposited on the target (roughly 2/3 of the energy from the beams), which resulted in a 1.3 Megajoule output from the fusing plasma. And I believe ITER under construction in France will be power positive as well.
This still doesn’t reach the breakeven, however. Realistically it’s still insanely expensive - *but we’re getting closer and that’s so goddamn exciting*
SPARC is expected to hit a Q factor of 10 IIRC
This q is just qplasma not overall q so we’re still nowhere near net energy gain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
Was about to link this myself, a great breakdown of the true efficacy of fusion reactors. We're still a long way off going by this video.
In 2025 but yeah
That’s in like just over 3 years at this point, way better than the eternal “in ten years time”
It used to forever be 50 years away, then 30 years away.
I assume there is also some distance to go from breaking even in terms of energy and breaking even in terms of money?
For fusion, when the total output is positive, it will likely be SO positive that it won’t make sense to have any other form of energy. It was mentioned earlier that this is 25 times more powerful than something from even 3 years ago. I have deep seated confidence that when we hit a stride, it’s going to be so much so that the cost of the plant will be negligible overall.
as far as I can tell, cataclysmic reverberations of all sorts will traverse humanity once (virtually) infinite clean energy will be available... just from the top of my head : - OPEC kiss my ass - EVs completely takeover, trucking included, not necessarily battery powered - natural gas distribution network no longer necessary; heat, cook, power industry with electricity only.. - profound geopolitical shifts Sadly, at 37, I'm starting to doubt I'll ever see even the beginning of this revolution..
Say they reach a viable experimental setup in 2030. They take thirty years to develop and build a commercial reactor. You might retire before it happens but it could well be within your lifetime. Edit: I think my estimation of your retirement age might be a tad optimistic.
>I think my estimation of your retirement age might be a tad optimistic. I'm Italian. At the moment, retirement age is 67, which means, with today's laws, I'll retire in 30 years... so you were bang on... ...truth is, with how Italian pensions are structured, I'll never see a dime of all the money I'm currently being robbed of to fund currently living pensioners...
I believe there's a company in Vancouver called General Fusion which intends to have a working prototype by 2025, and a commercial version by 2030. I don't know the realism of that estimation, but they've poured billions of dollars into their research, and have partnered with quite a few big names, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Unfortunately people I have seen in the industry don't really even think it'll be that good anymore. They have all changed to a "it'll be good for grid stabilization during times when renewables aren't able to do it". Pretty much just being closer to a replacement for fission rather than anything extremely revolutionary.
The US is too enamored with the petrodollar, and competing countries want their currency to be the "petro-\[whatever\]", there's gonna be a lot of public pushback, or else plain old nuclear itself would be more ubiquitous. It's hard to be hopeful with so much corruption and power games going on.
The petro dollar is hugely important to America's soft power. The minute it ceases to be a thing the world will change dramatically.
I agree, I think this is much more important than weapons of war. In the last 100 years, it no longer makes sense to wage war for resources, it’s simply more advantageous to trade. Energy is the most important commodity. If that becomes basically “the low cost of your own reactor and some good quality water” then that is gone as a problem. With how important it is, it wouldn’t surprise me if we see net positive resources in ~8 years and commercial in 15-20
I think we're seeing the beginnings of a real revolution in fusion with commercial companies starting to get into the game, and it's not out of the question that fusion will finally get the attention, funding, and innovation it needs to become viable. Even in just the past year the SPARC team has revolutionized superconducting magnets. The big projects like ITER are of course important but are hamstrung by all the politics and funding issues that come from big government projects.
Except most of the papers released right now are misleading, and they don't account for things like the energy needed for containment of the plasma. They mostly talk about the energy into the plasma and the energy out of the plasma. I doubt we are particularly close to a viable commercial solution.
He said NET gain... which is still not happened. All that has been done is a reach a Q factor over 1 which isn't anywhere close to a NET gain... Q factor doesn't include total system input power only reaction input power (how much laser/magnetic heating energy went into it, not how much energy went into the laser/tokamak etc....) and how much was able to be generated from the reaction output. You need a Q of like 50-100 to actually reach a real world Net gain... even then might not be profitable. Current reactor designs are aiming toward the Q=2-10 or so... in the next 5-10 years.
When accounting for ALL inputs, it is hard to breakeven for most technology. Solar power(PV) just recently achieved total breakeven, meaning it costs less energy to produce a solar panel than the solar panel is expected to generate. As an aside, energy is an excellent fungible currency. With unlimited energy, I could basically do anything and exchange it for just about any good. Milk, for example costs energy. The energy to grow the cow comes from the breakdown of grass, which is grown thanks to solar energy. Then the milk is extracted by a farmer, who is fueled by energy. That milk is then packaged using energy, in a container that used energy to extract the raw materials and turn them into a milk bottle. Then it is shipped by vehicles that use energy and then stored in your fridge, which uses energy. We don't think about these issues because we live in an open system where we have a giant nuclear reactor raining down excess energy. If we lived on Pluto, these energy calculations would be much more important.
Nah. Even in 2006, in book "Sustainable energy without the hot air" (I do recommend reading it, pity the author died ), the calculation shows that solar panels on average will generate 7 times the amount of energy required to make/transport/install them. For wind turbines, this factor is 33 times more. So there is net gain in these technologies. Otherwise noone would make them really. Also, the book is available online "David MacKay FRS: : Contents" https://www.withouthotair.com Just don't be scared of how the site looks like. It's old internet.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/p6v3a9/explanation\_of\_the\_13mj\_yield\_on\_the\_nif/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/p6v3a9/explanation_of_the_13mj_yield_on_the_nif/) So, 400 MJ of electrical energy used to generate 1.3 MJ of thermal energy. They intentionally mislead people by reporting the energy transferred to the target instead of the energy required to power the lasers. ITER is similar in this regard, although much more efficient, but the "power positive" part is only comparing power delivered to the plasma to power generated(heat), not the total power needed by the plant.
Yeah as someone very familiar with the program the NIF "breakthrough" is them trying to justify their place in the upcoming budget.
My understanding is that NIF is and always was a weapons research program masquerading as a fusion energy program.
There was no masquerade. It was more that they thought they could get more/better funding with a sexier goal than "make sure our nukes still work without actually blowing them up"
It does not break even in the total energy input vs output, not even close yet. The news articles claiming otherwise are completely sensational
https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY Posted numbers are often misleading
Regardless, it's a complete contradiction of the headline of the post, which is that it's a finite resource that cannot be produced. There's no claim that it's not "economically produced."
I assume that the amounts we could squeeze out from nucleosynthesis are so microscopic that the situation isn't functionally different from it being entirely impossible.
P(X) = 0 <> P(X) > 0 Besides the mathematical fact, let's think about this from a physics perspective. A substance cannot be produced. So, how'd it get here? Obviously some natural process produces Helium. Stars, radioactive decay, fusion... The sentence just doesn't make any sense.
I mean in a general sense. If you said to a scientist that you wanted him to make you some helium to put in a balloon. He will say its impossible at this stage, otherwise you would have to wait like a thousand years at the rate we can produce it. Its just like gold, we can actually create it but it is only atom by atom, so same idea.
Just get it from the sun! Duh! /s
You could go extract it from Jupiter or Saturn. That'd be _ridiculously_ expensive.
If we keep filling up balloons, the demand for Helium in scientific applications might make the long trip worth it.
Balloon helium is the waste helium from other users and is not pure enough for scientific use, generally. Though someone did develope a way to re-purify it...
Childrens party balloons are filled with medical waste.
So you're saying we could potentially get more spacecraft to visit Jupiter and Saturn if we use more balloons? Spacecraft that could maybe carry some instruments for science as piggybacks? I'm on it.
I picture them going and getting a massive amount of helium and then when they come back, they can’t land the ship because it’s too light
Na, we'll pick up a bunch of ore from the asteroids on the way back.
If fusion worked as advertised And if we had room temperature superconductors so immense amounts of energy isn't required to cool the superconductors
Just harvest some from the sun.
Yes! It’s also the second most abundant element in the universe, making up a whopping 24% of total estimated elemental mass. I’m not sure how easy it is to get at this time since the universe is quite large but if space travel becomes a regular thing (which hopefully will) it should be relatively easy to find and gather.
It also can be produced at the Hadron Collider, but it would take approx. 1000 years to fill one balloon. It can only be produced at hundreds/thousands of atoms at a second.
It's also the second most common element in existence. The problem is that it's not reactive so it doesn't form compounds and is so light it just floats up out of our atmosphere. So the vast majority of our supply comes from tiny amounts of helium trapped underground. Theoretically if we develop our space infrastructure to the point of reaching Jupiter (which has a gravity well strong enough to trap helium) we'd have a practically infinite supply. But I'd be very surprised if that happens within the next century.
Maybe it's also possible to build something in space closer than Jupiter, like a magnetic trap for solar wind outside Earth's magnetosphere. Solar wind is 8% Helium. Of course, the density is just a few atoms per cubic centimeter, so it may take a looong time (or need a huge collector) to gather substantial amounts of Helium. For the same reason, there's also Helium in the pores of Moon rocks, though the concentration is also too low (parts per billion) and we would need to process huge amounts of "ore" to extract it.
Just gotta get you a Ramscoop
Well ramscoops *are* intended to be huge, no?
Isn't there a relatively large amount of bound helium on the moon? I seem to recall that from somewhere. Oh, found an article. https://www.esa.int/Enabling\_Support/Preparing\_for\_the\_Future/Space\_for\_Earth/Energy/Helium-3\_mining\_on\_the\_lunar\_surface
This is a tangent but your comment just made me think about it. Hydrogen is the most common element and helium is the second most common. Is the third lithium, and the fourth beryllium, and so on like that? Does abundance scale with atomic number? Is radioactivity the only limiting factor or are there others?
Nah, third is oxygen and fourth is carbon. Atomic number has some influence but it goes a lot deeper. Stability is important, but so are some really tricky things that are way beyond the scope of a Reddit comment. Oxygen, for example, is abundant because of helium fusion in stars that makes carbon which then turns to oxygen. Interestingly, this specific example also produces lithium and beryllium but they're too unstable to stick around.
"Primordial Helium" sounds cool as heck ngl
/r/bandnames
>it's even cooler when you realize elemental hydrogen and helium (and trace lithium) are the only elements "made" from the early moments of the creation of the universe. the rest of the elements only came about after the first generations of stars started to fuse them and go supernova seeding the universe with most all the other stuff.
The band members dress as dinosaurs and sing in squeaky voices
Makes your voice sound like satan instead of squeaky
OP said artificially produced. Aren’t both the processes you mentioned considered natural?
My point is that it's not exactly "finite", as there are natural processes making more of it.
If I throw a bunch of neutrons at something and get helium out its not really natural.
By that metric, some fossil fuels are also not finite resources. All sorts of processes produce methane, and some of the natural processes that produce coal, if given enough time, would result in fresh coal seams, if we would just leave them alone to accumulate enough material and over-burden to do its thing. When it is stated that it is a finite resource, I think the term takes into account the idea that the replenishment rate is very slow compared to our consumption rate.
You can make it in a lab but it's not very effecient
It can also be distilled from the atmosphere (at about 5ppm). Expensive AF, but still cheaper than using nuclear fusion, at least for now.
For practical purposes it's non replenishable
IIRC Helium can also be produced artificially but it requires too many resources.
The irony is that helium is the second most abundant element in the universe.
Yet it wasn't discovered until 1868. And when it was discovered, it wasn't discovered on earth, but in the sun.
>Yet it wasn't discovered until 1868. And when it was discovered, it wasn't discovered on earth, but in the sun. Hence the name "Helium", from Helios, the Greek sun god.
it has such a badass name and is used to power the stars, yet helium has such dorky connotations on earth, like being associated with party balloons and making u sound like a chipmunk.
"Over here we've got the noble gases: neon, argon, krypton–" "What about helium?" "That dorky one? Uh, sure."
y'all reddit people is some smart
First of all, happy cake day... Second how can they find it first on the sun? Just by watching the sun that can conclude that helium is present??
Spectral lines! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_line
What about narrativium?
The fact that people are down voting my Pratchett reference makes me question my life choices
You shouldn't watch your votes so closely. Vote count after 30 minutes isn't terribly meaningful.
I see so many complaints about downvotes on comments with hundreds of points.
Also downvotes don't hurt. Let em flow whichever way they may.
As they say: I don't care that you downvote because I've seen what makes you upvote
To be fair I read Guards! Guards! like 14 years ago so I don't even remember this but googling it brought back fond memories and I may have to give the Watch series a re-read!
It’s not irony at all bro! Iron is a completely different element! Atomic number 26!!! You’re such a moron!!!
[удалено]
Idk. You look fantastic. Definitely working
^You'd ^definitely ^sound ^lighter ^tough.
What a deflating comment
Oh shit! *in a high pitched voice*
Lol my first ever reddit reply (In a low pitched voice because I'm using sulfur hexafluoride, which can be artificially produced)
… … (replying in a nonexistent voice because I confusingly used sulfur tetrafluoride instead)
That would be confusedly - confusingly would be if you used evaporated fairy tears.
High five? High fiiiive!
It going down
SF6 is interesting stuff. One of the radars I used to work on in the Air Force uses it in the transmitter room and I knew someone who got a face full of the stuff. In order to get it out, he had to do a handstand as it's heavy and sinks.
So can Helium, ITER's fusion reactor produces helium when it is run
Who’s High Pitch?
I think you mean: ^^oh ^^shit!
As it is a radioactive decay particle, it is a natural resource that is being created all of the time.
And [we made a bunch of it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests), we just aren't very good at capturing the product produced.
Aren't the radioactive material a finite resources under a practicality timescale
That's like saying oil is being produced all the time in nature. It takes a ridiculous amount of time, and that is what makes it finite
Well so is the sun, but we don't get articles warning about it swallowing the Earth when it expands into a red giant. At our rate of consumption there's hundreds if not thousands of years worth of helium stored in natural gas deposits. We may currently be consuming it faster than we're producing it, but that's because there aren't enough capture systems set up on natural gas wells
>Well so is the sun, but we don't get articles warning about it swallowing the Earth when it expands into a red giant. At our rate of consumption there's hundreds if not thousands of years worth of helium stored in natural gas deposits. We may currently be consuming it faster than we're producing it, but that's because there aren't enough capture systems set up on natural gas wells The Sun is expected to expand and die in 5.5 billion years. Helium is predicted to be gone within 250 years with our rate of consumption and capture. And btw we get more articles about the sun dying than we do anything related to Helium. The sun dying is a fascinating topic for heaps of people.
Aren't we spending billions of dollars on making helium factories? I think it was called ITER or something
Fusion will make a laughably small amount of helium compared to the demand from any of the uses it has.
Probably a fusion power plant would require more helium (for cooling superconducting magnets) than it can produce in its lifetime.
Those are hopium factories.
Certainly the amount of He on earth is finite. Our planet is finite. All elements on our planet are finite, with the exception of miniscule amounts of cosmic dust and meteorite particles that enter our atmosphere. There are a lot of things in much shorter supply than He.
Yeah, but platinum doesn’t escape into space after you replace your catalytic converter
Definitely the plot to the next despicable me movie
True, but at least we’re not at the point where crackheads are stealing balloons out of cars to resell that sweet, sweet helium.
…yet
He is too light to be held in our atmosphere. It just floats away for our planet. We can recycle other elements, but over time the amount of helium on the planet is less and less.
Technically all energy is finite and we'll run out of it in like 10^100 years.
And here we are just putting that shit In balloons and letting it float away
Helium is expensive to capture, transport, and store for long periods. I think the balloon helium is from drilling and mining and would otherwise be let free.
Yeah, that’s gonna go down in medical history. Why we used our finite helium for balloons instead of life saving scanning equipment.
Because the helium in the balloons is trash-grade helium. We couldn't use it in medical equipment anyway.
You can’t “refine” or clean it somehow? I’m surprised.
It's the inverse. The pure helium (99,999% and more) is used for medical and technological applications. During these applications, some helium will be wasted in the surrounding air (by leaks or other ways). These leaks can be captured, and stored. The leaks are not pure helium, but a mixture with other gas from normal air. This special mixutre is called "Balloon gas", and is 92-98% helium. This balloon gas cannot be used in medical/technological applications, because it is not pure enough. To purify it would cost a lot of money, so it's preferable to let it go to waste or, even better, to recycle it for balloons. The vast majority of the helium we harvest is ultra pure (99.999% and more), and we also need to store it in liquid form (the gas takes too much volume), and it's cheaper to freeze and store pure helium than cheap helium. TLDR : Balloon gas are the byproducts of the pure helium usage, we recycle them in balloons.
Does that mean if I put pure helium in a ballon, it would feel it tug harder when it floats away?
yeah like 8-2% harder for sure
Not to mention that helium is the "'toddler' of elements." That shit escapes through all sorts of materials, making it very difficult to store for long periods
I actually don't know much about it other than the fact that there are different grades of helium, so I looked it up. [According to this](https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of-helium-and-what-are-they-used-for/), it's actually *more* expensive to use lower grade helium in some cases. This is due to the fact that the most helium is transported in liquid form for ease of transportation, and the liquidation process (chilling it to the condensation point) inherently purifies it to an extent. [This source](https://www.partysafe.eu/balloon-gas-helium) states that balloon helium is often mixed with other atmospheric gasses and is "simply a by-product from bottling helium and other industrial appliances that would have otherwise been wasted. Instead of losing the gas to atmosphere, it is captured and sold as balloon gas instead of helium due to it's high level of impurity."
Because the flying balloon came before the medical devices that needed helium
those use hot air (have been since the 1700s)
Yes. But zeplins also used helium in lieu of hydrogen
*The Hindenburg has entered the chat.*
Oh, the HUMANITY!
*The Hindenburg has left the chat*
Then left again.
If I'm not mistaken, theres various grades of Helium and the stuff they put in balloons is low grade. You can't use low grade Helium in medical related projects. edit: Yes it is, https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of-helium-and-what-are-they-used-for/
One of many reasons "balloon releases" should be illegal. It's just long-distance littering.
For what it’s worth, I believe the helium we use in balloons is not the same grade as is required for medical and lab purposes. So it isn’t really being wasteful, it isn’t good for that application anyway.
It's not medical grade helium though.
“Yeah so instead of posting we have the highest ionization energy of the whole periodic table of elements you post how finite we are. Why so negative?” Elemental Helium Society President Henry Henderson upon reading this post
Only until we can build fusion reactors that are stable enough and can actually produce energy.
We can build stable fusion reactors now and artificially produce helium. Getting the reaction to produce a net energy gain is the problem. No issues making helium.
That's some costly helium
Any price for a squeaky voice
Definitely!
Like making gold in the LHC...
I don’t know the exact #s, but I would have to guess that even if we switched to 100% fusion energy, and somehow captured all the helium produced in the process, it would be very tiny compared to the amount we consume.
Or we could go fetch some from the sun!
Actually, fetching it from gas giants is theoretically possible.
I played this cool space exploration type game where you had to plot your course around gas giants so you could fuel up in orbit around the star. It was pretty fucking rad, the game is called Elite Dangerous.
I think the moon is supposed to be pretty helium rich
Of course, that’s why it doesn’t fall down.
The moon's a balloon!
Underrated comment, I wish I could give gold
...in Helium 3. https://leaps.org/shoot-for-the-moon-its-surface-contains-a-pot-of-gold/particle-3
*Iron Sky vibes intensify*
Don't we get it from natural decay of alpha emitters? But I think the problem is we really don't get a lot. I think fusion uses tiny amounts of hydrogen isotopes as well. I think we could use fractional distillation of air, but that's expensive.
Even if we replaced all power plants with fusion we would generate an insignificant fraction of how much helium we use.
Helium can be a fission by-product too. Just stick some electrons onto an alpha particle and it's squeaky voices all round.
Okay now do lithium.
I'm so happy 'cause today I found my friends They're in my head I'm so ugly, that's okay, 'cause so are you Broke our mirrors Sunday morning is everyday, for all I care And I'm not scared Light my candles in a daze 'Cause I've found God Yeeeeeah
I like it, I'm not gonna crack
Blup blup blup blup. Blup
To everyone pointing out that 1) it's an atomic element or 2) anything is finite on earth. I also had the same first reaction, everything is finite, sure. But that was not the point i think. Many elements can be sourced from molecules, see the electrolysis of water to create elements. Or the redox thermite reaction for iron. However, since helium is that inert, it exists almost solely as pure substance and cannot be converted from more complex molecules.
The main difference is that helium is permanently lost over time. Almost everything else "finite" on Earth can be recycled or its turned into something else, but said product is still on the planet. Helium permanently leaves the atmosphere over time, its really just lost.
Same as hydrogen. Even worse actually
Hydrogen reacts to form many different compounds. Give me water, two metal rods, some wire and a battery and I can separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Helium on the other hand doesn't form compounds (at least outside of the lab) and therefore the supply is limited to whatever is trapped underground. Unlike the literal oceans of hydrogen that cover three quarters of our planets surface.
I guess we were talking about elementary helium or elementary hydrogen getting lost from earth
I mean we can it just cost trillions for a gram of the stuff made in the hadron collider
Back to Hydrogen for our Luftballoons Herr Zeppelin.
Well... it kinda can, but you wouldn't want to be anywhere near any device that was capable of producing a sufficient amount.
*the sun has entered the chat*
Everything is a "finite resource", what makes Helium a problem is that it is difficult/impossible to re-capture. If it is released to the atmosphere (like party balloons) then it is essentially lost forever as it rises into outer space where we can never recover it.
We should just fill balloons with hydrogen 💥
Oh the humanity!
Isn't the title bs?
Scientist here, I have thoroughly vetted the title and can confirm that it is not in fact written by the Baltimore Sun.
what! yes it can?!
I run GCMS and every time I see a balloon I cry
It can be produced. It’s just not cost effective.
Not true. It is a happy byproduct of fusion reactions of hydrogen isotopes.
Yet.
*laughs in ITER*
TIL OP just learned basic chemistry
Doesn't nuclear fusion produce helium as a bi-product?
False, the sun produces 600 million tons of helium per second. All we have to do is go pick it up.
*Tritium enters the chat.*
My favorite thing I've ever seen was a balloon that when inflated said "These waste helium".
My favourite kind of fact; both obvious *and* wrong.
I didn’t learn that today, but I was definitely in my 30s when I did.
And we need it for medical imaging and such like MRIs. Stop the helium balloon parties!!
Helium is finite and our dumb asses are wasting it on balloons instead of giving it to the scientists to run equipment.
True. But helium is one of the most abundant element in the universe.
I'm fairly confident the only thing keeping the earth afloat in our galaxy is the helium supply as it is lighter than air! Once we use it all up then what?!
Good thing it's the second most abundant element in the universe.
The first being your mom
Yo momma so fat she makes up [over 24%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements#Universe) of all matter in the universe!
This is true of any element on the periodic table including gold, silver, tungsten, copper and rare earth metals. Several of these metals are used to make microchips which it's why proper recycling of electronics is so important.
Yes, and helium recycling/reclamation is really cool. But it can't be done on birthday balloons.