Party City Closing 43 Stores As Helium Shortage Hurts Sales (miamiherald.com) 168
The CEO of Party City cited a global helium shortage as he announced on Thursday that the retail chain will close 45 of its 870 stores this year. The shortage has been hitting party supply stores particularly hard for months, CNBC reported last month. Miami Herald reports: Party City CEO James Harrison said in February that the company was already missing its revenue "in large part due to helium supply pressures," according to CNBC, which reports that the company has experimented with "decorative air-filled balloons -- in lieu of the real thing. The company didn't say which stores will close this year.
"The problem is, helium is being used up faster than it can be produced these days," Anders Bylund, an analyst at Motley Fool, said in an investing note. "Helium shortages fluctuate over time and across geographical markets, but anywhere between 50 and 200 of Party City's 850 stores don't have any helium in their tanks at any given time." Bylund added: "Helium may be the second most plentiful element in the universe, but it's also one of the lightest and doesn't form molecules easily with heavier atoms. Hence, the helium we use ends up floating into space, never to be seen again. There is no economically efficient way to manufacture the gas, so the bulk of the worldwide helium supply is a byproduct of natural gas extraction."
"The problem is, helium is being used up faster than it can be produced these days," Anders Bylund, an analyst at Motley Fool, said in an investing note. "Helium shortages fluctuate over time and across geographical markets, but anywhere between 50 and 200 of Party City's 850 stores don't have any helium in their tanks at any given time." Bylund added: "Helium may be the second most plentiful element in the universe, but it's also one of the lightest and doesn't form molecules easily with heavier atoms. Hence, the helium we use ends up floating into space, never to be seen again. There is no economically efficient way to manufacture the gas, so the bulk of the worldwide helium supply is a byproduct of natural gas extraction."
So stop wasting f**king Helium (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree! (Score:5, Funny)
I agree. Helium should only be used for legitimate scientific / medical purposes or to make ones voice super squeaky. That shit is always hilarious....
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I'm completely baffled over you trying to rationally debate someone who put scientific and medical uses for something on the same levels of importance as making ones voice squeaky.
I would think that given that fact, no rational person would think I was at any point laying out any kind of rational future plan for helium.
In other words, get a sense of humor.
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Based upon the discussion and it's nature, hell, why not just use hydrogen. Sure it is flammable, but it is not really that much to fill up, say a reinforced metal foil balloon and don't worry about the Hindenburg, you balloon will obviously not be the size of the Hindenburg and it wont explode as long as air is not mixed it with it, sure when punctured the escaping gas when mixing with air will burn but it wont explode and it is lighter and tends to vacate any ground locale pretty quickly. Worry about leak
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>"why not just use hydrogen. Sure it is flammable, but it is not really that much to fill up, say a reinforced metal foil balloon[...]and it wont explode as long as air is not mixed it with it"
Since it is lighter, it could be mixed with an inert gas, like nitrogen, to dilute it to the same lifting power of helium. This would further reduce flammability concerns...
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According to the MSDS, Hydrogen (H2) gas mixed with Helium at concentrations not exceeding 8.4% is officially non-flammable. From what I've read, there's close to zero danger the hydrogen and helium would separate out within a balloon at anything close to normal room temperature. Worst-case, you might end up with something that could flame out for a fraction of a second (like when you ignite a gas grill) before running out of metaphorical steam to continue burning.
Another possibility if helium got to be WAY
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diluting hydrogen with a combination of helium and argon.
Why argon? It is substantially heavier than inert nitrogen molecules.
Re: I agree! (Score:2)
Mainly, because it's the cheapest noble gas. I figured that H2 has more lift than He, so if He were REALLY expensive, you could find a mixture of He+H2+Ar that dilutes the H2 enough to be safe, but still has enough lift to work for balloons while using as little He & being as cheap as possible.
Ne would obviously be better than Ar, but Ne is so expensive, it would probably make more financial sense to just buy back helium balloons before most of it leaks away & recover the helium for resale.
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It leaks, easily, and creates fascinating fire hazards among playful children at birthday events. The tanks are also much more hazardous than helium tanks.
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Have you ever seen a fire started by hydrogen balloons? In my experience they don't seem to actually burn very hot, though nice and loud.
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Since it is lighter, it could be mixed with an inert gas, like nitrogen, to dilute it to the same lifting power of helium.
Hydrogen is half the weight, but only 20% greater lifting power.
What about using methane? Much cheaper, and good enough to lift party balloons.
If it does catch fire, it makes a far more spectacular fireball than hydrogen does.
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>Since it is lighter, it could be mixed with an inert gas, like nitrogen, to dilute it to the same lifting power of helium
Not so much. Lifting power is determined by molecular mass, since at a given pressure and temperature there will be the same number of molecules of gas in a given volume, regardless of what that gas is (the ideal gas law: PV=nRT).
More specifically, lifting power is determined by buoyancy: the difference in the density of the lift gas and the surrounding air. Hydrogen is half as den
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... Yet.
You weren't particularly attached to those eyebrows?
Re:I agree! (Score:5, Interesting)
How much helium as a percentage of global production is needed for those purposes anyway?
Less than 10% of helium consumption is used in balloons, and it is generally low grade contaminated crap that is unfit for other purposes. The major contaminants are N2, CH4, and H2. The belief that we are running out of helium because of birthday parties is nonsense.
Here is the real reason for the shortage: Shale gas.
Helium is a byproduct of natural gas production from conventional wells. But shale gas fields contain negligible amounts, and it is not worth extracting. So as cheap shale gas has displaced conventional gas, the conventional wells are capped.
So the helium shortage is not because we are "running out", but the exact opposite: More is being left in the ground.
There is an obvious solution: Raise the price. As the price goes up, more and more conventional wells will become profitable to put back into production.
Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
"So the helium shortage is not because we are "running out", but the exact opposite: More is being left in the ground."
Truly.
Really this is a case that the free market can easily solve (and before uber Leftist start whining over ideological purity, I'm a good bit on the Left myself). As prices for helium go up due to scarcity helium balloons will go out of style for most. Meanwhile, medical and research facilities that actually need helium should generally be able to afford the increased costs.
In other words, there's still plenty of helium out there, the only thing the helium "shortage" threatens is the balloon industry. Legitimate usage should be able to easily absorb the extra costs associated with our current "shortage".
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Meanwhile, medical and research facilities that actually need helium should generally be able to afford the increased costs.
...in developed, rich countries.
Other places may experience that differently.
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I think if they can afford the very expensive equipment that requires helium then they'd typically be able to afford it.
You probably have a point though for the poorest of third world countries. It's possible they ended up with these expensive devices through donation and the higher running costs due to helium price increases might be a burden for them.
To have an intelligent discussion on this I feel like we'd need to know how much helium something like an MRI machine (probably the most significant medical
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The free market should be allowed to make the sale price match the production cost, so that only the rich can get MRIs.
The free market already sets the price of helium, and the stuff is so cheap that MRIs routinely vent to the atmosphere during maintenance because it isn't worth the cost of capturing and recycling.
Government price controls to discourage party balloons will have no effect on MRIs, because the low grade crap in balloons isn't unusable for cryogenics.
When CH4 is liquified for oceanic transport, the gas that is left is mostly helium. It is purified with diffusion, and the dreg gas left over is a mix of helium,
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I feel like you've failed to establish the need for government price controls. If helium becomes scarce enough that it becomes costly to harvest then prices will naturally go up. There's your price control. If it's plentiful enough to be cheap then it is most certainly not scarce.
You even stated yourself that we're not in any real danger of actually running out of helium. I just connected the dots for you to complete the thought that the only interests in true danger of not having enough helium in any reali
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I feel like you've failed to establish the need for government price controls.
I was arguing against price controls.
Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
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"Sorry if I didn't make that clear."
No, I think I misread. Anyways, my apologies,
Re: Sure (Score:5, Informative)
If one source of helium shuts down, how does that affect the costs of other producers?
All helium produced is a byproduct of natural gas production. All producers use the same process.
You get three things:
1. Liquified gas.
2. Purified "cryogenic-quality" helium
3. Leftover "buoyancy-quality" gas
Pure helium sells for about $4 / cubic-meter. If your processing cost is $5 / cubic-meter, then you can only run the process profitably if you can recover another buck from the waste stream. If that revenue stream is cut off because of some misguided regulation, then the high cost producers drop out of the market, and the price goes up.
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When you say "some misguided regulation", it sounds like you are implying that regulation is generally misguided if it causes the price to go up. True, logically, your sentence only applies to a particular category of regulation that happens to be misguided, and says nothing of regulation that is not misguided. But, if you consider the sentence to still be true without the word "misguided", then this violates the principle of efficiency. Perhaps regulation exists for some other reason than short term prices
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it sounds like you are implying that regulation is generally misguided if it causes the price to go up.
No. I am implying that regulation is generally misguided if it fails to solve the problem it was designed to solve, and instead makes it worse.
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True, it's low grade. But it could be refined. It may not be economically competitive to refine it now, but in the future, it probably will be. Unfortunately, we don't know how to value natural resources for the long term, but I suppose that's a problem for children.
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True, it's low grade. But it could be refined.
Not really. Separating helium from CH4 is economical for two reasons:
1. CH4 liquifies at 112K.
2. The CH4 is being liquified anyway.
N2 liquifies much lower (77K), and H2 even lower (20K). The cost of cooling goes up exponentially as you get closer to 0K and it is a sunk cost since there is no other reason to cool the gas.
This makes NO SENSE, since if you need more helium it would be far more cost effective to process lower grades of raw gas, such as 1.5% or even 1% helium.
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>How much helium as a percentage of global production is needed for those purposes anyway?
The key thing to keep in mind is that global production of helium is zero - we mine it, but we do not produce it. And unlike basically every other elemental resource on Earth, helium escapes into space after use, so the total supply on Earth is constantly diminishing and can't be replenished*. When all the oil is used up we won't be able to use it as an energy source any more, but we can still make more for applic
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or to make ones voice super squeaky. That shit is always hilarious.
Especially when people die [news.com.au].
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Naw. I'm gonna keep laughing for sure.
Convince me that it kills healthy people who are not drunk when they do it, and I'll agree it is dangerous. If it only kills drunk young men at parties that only puts it on par with laundry soap.
If you're as drunk as an Australian teenager at a party, breathing air might even kill you. Sometimes it does.
Fire dancers are fun to watch. Very entertaining. I read on the internet about a drunk woman who burned herself alive trying to fire dance. It isn't going to stop people
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Using helium for balloons is criminal. We need to regulate
Regulation will do nothing to solve the problem, and will likely be counter-productive.
By shrinking the market, regulation will result in lower prices. This will make it less economical to extract helium from marginal gas fields (currently they have to be at least 2% helium to make extraction profitable in America, and even higher in Qatar (the only other significant producer)). So more helium will just go up the smokestacks at power plants.
Lower prices will also discourage recovery and recycling from cry
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BULLSHIT!
There is no thing in this universe that is produced and/or traded that is NOT regulated somehow.
Everything is regulated. It's just the question of whom does the current regulation scheme benefit the most.
Babbling that regulations somehow instantly "shrink the market" is pure drivel and bullshit that only a deeply indoctrinated inbred moron can believe in - or an asshole of the highest order who'd sell his own mother to the local pig farm to be used for experimental swine-to-human insemination test,
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Babbling that regulations somehow instantly "shrink the market" is pure drivel
Of course. But nobody said that. Obviously, a regulation to set a high price would flood the market rather than shrinking it.
What we are talking about is a specific regulation: Banning the use of helium in party balloons.
That would increase the price, shrink the market, do nothing to resolve the "shortage", and make a lot of little children sad.
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Why? What alternate use do you have for low purity helium?
Re:So stop wasting f**king Helium (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why aren't the environmentalists all over this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Balloons, and especially helium balloons, as party decorations are just a terrible idea.
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filled up the trash can on my boat (after popping the balloons)
You savage animal! All that wasted residual helium by popping those balloons!
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So you're scooping out almost entirely empty helium balloons? How thoughtful and ecologically sound of you, thank you.
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And, instead of helium, they could simply change to hydrogen, which is easy and simple to produce. It's not like a 0.5 ft^3 balloon is the Hindenburg. Some solar panels on the roof of each store could keep up.
Re:Why aren't the environmentalists all over this? (Score:4, Insightful)
>"You think when you let a helium balloon go it just floats off into space?[...] Balloons, and especially helium balloons, as party decorations are just a terrible idea."
Actually, it is *littering* that is a terrible idea. And that is exactly what releasing helium balloons in the air "to be free" is- it is littering. Not much different than popping the balloon and just leaving it on the ground, perhaps a little worse.
So a good idea is to educate people that it is, in fact, littering.
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Balloons are supposed to be made out of latex and other degradable materials. If you ignore them they will be gone in a few months anyway.
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*Aren't all the elements' names proper nouns?
Element symbols are capitalized, but the names themselves are not proper nouns (at least not in English). Kind of like how Tesla (the man, or the company) is a proper noun, and the unit is represented by the letter "T", but the unit's full name is written "tesla". (Only units named after people -- the newton, gauss, kelvin, tesla, etc. -- get capitalized symbols.)
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I'm on the west coast and when I'm deep in the forest foraging for mushrooms I find them. From Japan, South Korea, China. I guess some of the ones from here make it to NY or Paris.
I always wonder, what would that birthday child think 2 weeks after their birthday, if they knew it was still floating in the clouds, or a year later, 5 years later. What would a teenager think if you said to them, "Hey, remember that birthday party you had 5 years ago? One of your balloons just killed a turtle."
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There's just a lot of shit going on, environmentalists are busy.
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Well hooray for the free market. It is doing as you ask.
Industrial users will be more willing to pay higher prices but party decorations are cheaper to substitute with other crap.
Indeed (Score:1)
..it's no laughing matter!
meanwhile in thailand.. (Score:2)
..meanwhile in thailand you can buy helium filled balloons for the same price as last year and the year before at local fairs, concerts etc.
it's kinda strange. when growing up in finland helium filled balloons were a really rare treat. but in asia it's not that big of a deal at all, to this day, so it's kind of mixed signals about the helium shortage. if helium is available so easily there, why wouldn't party city just buy it from whoever is providing the fair patrons in asia with it? surely they could pay
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Science does not actually need to study helium. It is not all that precious scientifically.
Also, you can't contain it for long. If it gets mined you better use it, because it will be leaking out of whatever you store it in.
If you remove it from the ground, it is "gone" forever. That has nothing to do with if you made balloons or not.
And using for MRIs is wasteful too; it's power as a coolant is due to the fact that you're evaporating it away!
Mechanical cooling of MRI machines is both the past, and also the
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Yeah, but we don't necessarily have to do it by boiling off the helium. There's at least one company that thinks they can do it with a closed-loop compressor setup based on helium, similar to the way modern air conditioners work. [wired.co.uk]
And there's nothing preventing hydrogen from being used for that, either [scitation.org].
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You were tricked by some clickbait, sorry.
That isn't something new somebody thinks they can do, that is exactly the "mechanical cooling" that I referred to.
They did use the word "mechanical" in the article, so you had a chance to catch it, but they also used weasel words that implied there was something new; but only actually talked about a company with a new product.
That's a new brand, not a new technique.
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I don't think so. The technology in question does not use liquid helium or liquid nitrogen.
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Why are you arguing with me about what I was already talking about? If you couldn't read it the first time, OK, but there is no excuse to continue to not understand even after receiving additional explanations.
If you think I'm wrong, don't tell me; look it up. Rest assured I did look it up before making my original comment.
You linked to clickbait that muddled together 2 stage "mechanical cooling" with a liquid nitrogen first stage, doing it without that, and doing it partially with a limited amount of heliu
Not millenials? (Score:2)
Shocked that this one isn't also being blamed on us millennials.
Maybe people are 'over' buying a bunch of cheap plastic crap from China to dump it into the trash after a party. Or if we are going to we'll just get it on Alibaba without the markup for a bunch of real estate in strip malls.
of course not (Score:2)
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Shocked that this one isn't also being blamed on us millennials.
Well, the millennials age-wise are right in the middle of raising their families and and those early years of balloon-filled birthday parties so...
Close All of Them (Score:2, Insightful)
In the wake of the retail Apocalypse, what societal value does Party City even provide? Jobs for people too lazy for Hot Topic? Better brands have already fallen. They exist because their products are so exceptionally low quality shit nobody needs from China with incredible margins. Screw Hallowe
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It _can_ be gathered by space based solar mirrors, which can also harvest solar power. It's not economical yet to harvest helium this way, but it's technologically feasible.
Re: Close All of Them (Score:1)
You do know that what gets sold for party balloons is low quality helium and is the waste from refining it for medical and scientific uses, right? You know that if it wasnt sold to the party industry, it would be gassed off as an unusable byproduct, right?
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I pity the poor person who attempts to do an MRI with a machine filled using the low purity crap they put in balloons.
Halloween is mostly missing the fun these days (Score:3)
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economically efficient (Score:2)
I suppose if the shortage continues, either someone will invest in R&D and find such a way, or the price will rise until known methods become economically efficient.
That is, if my "Free Market Über Alles" friends are correct in their beliefs, of course.
By the way, how would one "manufacture" helium, a noble gas? It seems like alpha particles and radioactive decay would have to be involved, somehow.
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Alpha decay is where most if not all helium on Earth comes from.
Fusion might eventually be an option. That's where most if not all helium in the sun comes from. I doubt it will be economical any time soon, though.
Re:economically efficient (Score:5, Informative)
Our sun consumes about 620 tons of Hydrogen and yields about 606 tons of Helium, every second. The remaining mass is converted to energy.
4 H --> 1 He + 2 positrons + (An enormous amount of energy.)
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By the way, how would one "manufacture" helium, a noble gas? It seems like alpha particles and radioactive decay would have to be involved, somehow.
Fusion.
Option #2 (Score:2)
> I suppose if the shortage continues, either
> someone will invest in R&D and find such a way, or
> the price will rise until known methods become economically efficient.
I'm betting on option 2 - helium will rise.
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Helium isn't the second most common... (Score:2)
thing in the universe.
refer to Harlan Ellison or Frank Zappa as you prefer.
I call horseshit (Score:1)
No more helium?!? (Score:2)
Wait, you're telling me that the more we fight climate change and the more we stop using natural gas the less helium we’re going to have??? I’m OK with that but these delicate fucking snowflakes in California sure as hell won’t be!! They don’t understand the concept of fucking sacrifice they want their cake and eat it too
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they want their cake and eat it too
That better be gluten free, soy free, dairy free cake or those snowflakes will be all over you.
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Yea i just read this article about this dude in UK that literally cut off his nuts and penis in a hotel room because he wanted to be gender-neutral. Pretty much the same thing.
huh? (Score:1)
Use Methane or Hydrogen... (Score:2)
Great news (Score:2)
Not only is a scarce element wasted on the balloons, but they routinely fly away and end up littering waterways, seas and oceans with plastic. The end to this ridiculous custom can't come soon enough.
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Balloons are a small use for helium.
Helium is vital for welding. (Score:2)
Helium is vital to industry as shielding gas for welding aluminum and other non-steel metals. It's been expensive for many years.
Balloons are wasteful trifles but make a good headline since few people who don't weld even know what "welding" means.
My name is TIG (Score:1)
For "tungsten inert gas." Any inert gas will prevent the unintended oxidation of the weld. Helium helps to remove the heat faster, which might be a benefit, but there are surely workarounds.
Parties? Auto Dealers! Housing developments! (Score:3)
Party balloons
Maybe I don't get invited to enough parties, but it looks to me more like the big user of helium is advertising displays.
Mainly car dealerships, who constantly fly multiple hundred-foot-ish strings or arches of bundled balloons tethered to their sites (sometimes causing traffic problems when wind blows them out sideways across the street). But also apartment complexes, new home developments, and the occasional other sale.
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I did a quick google image search and I can confirm this. Balloons are really rare in party pictures. On the other hand on the marketing images about parties there are plenty of balloons.
I can easily understand why this is. Helium balloons are expensive and require extra work to get. Normal balloons are cheap and easy to get (small package you can keep in store and just blow em up when needed). And after a certain age you don't care much about balloons anyway.
SpaceX is abandoning helium too (Score:3)
Helium supply and price concerns are probably part of the reason SpaceX is not using helium with its huge new Raptor [wikipedia.org] rocket engine. The space industry is a major user of helium as its unique properties make it almost essential for certain engine types. The trouble is that our helium supplies can't really be scaled up, and scaling up is what SpaceX wants to do, so its Raptor engine uses methane for fuel, a choice that avoids the need for helium.
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Raptor was originally hydrolox, which requires no helium. They switched to methane/O2 because it is cheaper to store, manage and build engines for. The fact is that Hydrogen, Oxygen, methane, etc are self pressurizing as they heat up. OTOH, RP1 (roughly clean kerosene) is not.
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There's no actual shortage, there was a law change (Score:3, Informative)
In the 1930s the US Government was building giant rigid airships (like the German Zeppelins) and flying them filled with helium so that they would not be eager to burn at the first source of ignition like the Hindenburg was. Helium was at that time only naturally available from the helium mines in Texas (which was why Germany was using hydrogen for their airships) and given its tendency to be invisible and rise when released, helium was expensive because it was difficult to capture and store in those mines with the technology of the day.
As a result, the US Government passed a law requiring American petroleum people to capture any of the helium they released from the gound in their oil exploration and turn that helium over to the government which collected and stored it. The government setup an entity to handle the helium and allocate it for airships and for scientific and medical and military purposes. After the US government abandoned large airships, this entity and the laws surrounding it continued on auto-pilot like all government entities, which was accidentally good because with the arrival of the space age the US had massive stores of helium and helium was found to be the only gas that could be used to pressurize the liquid hydrogen tanks of rockets (any other gas would condense into a liquid at those low temps). Rockets used a bunch of helium, but no where near what was in storage and being accumulated thanks to the old laws, so the national helium reserves were opened up to allow people to buy the stuff for all purposes (including party balloons) a few decades ago.
Here's where things go bad:
In the 1990s when Republicans got control of congress for the first time in 40 years, and after decades of complaining about an endless list of government agencies that had outlived their usefulness and were running on autopilot and costing taxpayers billions of dollars per year, they needed to close SOME government agency SOMEWHERE, yet every single agency they looked at had some constituents and many of those new Republican congress members refused to close any agency in THEIR district. Nearly the only entity they found that they could close without screaming and complaining voters putting pressure on some member whose votes were needed was: the national helium reserve. So they voted in a bill ordering the reserve to sell off all the helium and close down, with the blind faith that market forces would kick-in and if consumers (or rocket people) needed helium, the petroleum industry would go right on collecting it and selling it without federal involvement. Helium prices tumbled as the helium reserve had a huge sell-off, and for years anybody could buy helium baloons so cheaply that one gave it little thought. Well, now that's over.
Oh, and this is NOT an anti-Republican rant (I lean to the political right myself, and contacted my congress critter at the time to warn of the stupidity of the action). The simple fact is that in the 1990s even Democrats were admitting government needed to make cuts SOMEWHERE, and the Democrats joined right in with the GOP in making this one thing seemingly the only agency they closed - not one person on capitol hill at the time seemed to care at all, and I suspect none of them even knew what a periodic table was. As a general rule (there are, of course, a few exceptions), poliiticians come from that slice of the human race with no insight, no curiosity, no practical skills other than smiling and glad-handing, but a gigantic conviction that they are the ones who should be running everything - they range from the super-smooth like Obama to the bungling verbal clutz like GW Bush, but once you get past the superficial presentation layer they're all about the same.
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It is a silly thing to reserve, because the storage tanks leak. A reserve isn't really a reserve in that case, it is more like a capacitor; a bulge in the supply chain that actually reduces the amount that gets to market, but prevents short term disruption.
That's great if you're building military airships, or have a military rocket program and a "space race," but without those the advantages of a leaky supply bulge dissipate fast.
The cold war ended, is what happened.
Seriously, THANK OBAMA!!! (Score:1)
If you remember that far back but the Obama administration decided to sell-off nearly ALL of the United Stats Helium reserves for pennies. This was not headline news but did make the WSJ as it is a key inert material used in the manufacturing of certain weapons.
The article, going from memory was mostly a by-product of steel(?) production and because it was a 'by-product' it is EVIL and ant-green. Ergo, we must destroy.
As always, the fools pay and those who don't play the fool win. $$$$
Why not Blame Trump - We're Tachies Afterall (Score:2)
the US HAD a Strategic Helium Reserve (Score:1)
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Hydrogen naturally extinguishes itself on combustion or oxidation as it produces water H20. H2+O = Boom + H2O
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You mean like all the crepe paper and cardboard plates that tend to congregate at birthday parties along with balloons?
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That stuff already catches fire and burns houses down just from the birthday candles. So I'd need to know the actual percentage increase of house-burning before I know if I care or not.
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Nitrogen has negligible lifting power in Earth's atmosphere.
Helium leaks (second smallest molecule) (Score:3)
> Can't they purchase more than they need when supply is decent, and use their stockpile when it isn't?
No. You may have noticed that when you have a balloon full of helium, in a day or two it no longer floats. That's because the helium has left the balloon - passing right through the rubber.
Helium gas molecules are a single atom, and the second-smallest atom. When you try to store it I a steel tank, you find that the space between iron molecules is larger than the size of a helium atom. So it's like c
NOT! I am NOT a chemist. (Score:2)
The last sentence was supposed to say "I am not a chemist". :)
I am also not an editor.
Not as bad as I thought (Score:2)
After I posted that, I got curious to double-check my own memory. It seems it WILL diffuse through most seals, but Los rates are more manageable than I was thinking.