Largest helium plant will deplete its reserves in eight years

Jan 7, 2008 08:47 GMT  ·  By
Large quantities of the noble gas are lost every year through helium filled balloons
   Large quantities of the noble gas are lost every year through helium filled balloons

Incredible as it may seem, the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen will soon be unavailable for Earth. Helium gas represents 8 percent of the total mass observed in the universe, but the reserves of the largest helium mining facility located in Texas are predicted to deplete in about eight years.

This is extremely bad news for the scientific community which is routinely using the light weight gas in experiments which require very low temperatures. Due to the potential loss of this seemingly abundant gas, currently most of the large American national laboratories are implementing programs to recycle the used helium. Unfortunately, smaller users of the same gas do not have this capability.

Aside broad range use in physical and chemical experiments, helium gas is also used in welding processes, fiber optics technology and the production process of microprocessors, along with other multiple uses. The possibility of using such an important gas is out of question as there is currently no technological process to produce it and, most importantly, due to its unique properties, it cannot be replaced with any other known substance.

Helium can be produced in laboratories, but industrial quantities are out of reach so far. The primary source of helium gas on Earth is from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. Taking into consideration that the half-life of radioactive elements ranges somewhere in the time of a few tens to hundreds of millions of years, the renewal of the wasted gas quantity through this particular process is close to impossible. According to reports of the evaluation of the total quantity of uranium-238 isotope, only half of the quantity present on Earth decayed, throughout the whole lifespan of our planet.

Similar to the decay of fossil deposits, helium gas is trapped along with natural gas, during the decay of thorium and uranium isotopes. Ultimately, part of the gas trapped in the gas pockets seep through the Earth crust and is eliminated into the atmosphere. Furthermore, the helium gas routinely used extracted by humans every year suffers the same faith and is lost forever into the Earth's atmosphere.

According to Lee Sobotka, the gas we've been extracting for the last century took more than 4.5 million years to generate, meaning no less than the exact age of the Earth. Nuclear fusion could represent one solution to the problem. The Sun is practically a helium producing plant, but there is no way to extract it because the Sun's surface temperature exceeds 5000 degrees Celsius, and the nuclear fusion reactors on Earth are mostly in the developing stage, but not even those could produce the required quantities.

Its unique atomic configuration, with a nucleus consisting of two protons and two neutrons commonly known as an alpha particle, presents a liquid phase while cooled below 4.2 Kelvin. Hydrogen, unlike helium which has a rather low affinity towards chemical reaction and is mostly found free in normal pressure and temperature conditions, is more abundant on Earth and combines with multiple elements to create a wide spread of simple or complex substances.

Helium is the second element in the periodical table of elements, the lightest after hydrogen, the colorless noble gas. It is a noble gas, thus it does not burn and all the compounds it forms in extreme conditions are unstable under normal conditions.

Helium gas was mostly popular in the 1920's when it was used in dirigibles, after the banning of hydrogen in the outcome of the Hindenburg tragedy. Large quantities of helium gas are dumped into Earth's atmosphere during the natural gas and oil extraction process, in order to remove the non-flammable components. In the mean time, laboratories all around the world have no choice except to invest in costly equipment that recycles helium.