[HN Gopher] Helium is again in short supply
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       Helium is again in short supply
        
       Author : moelf
       Score  : 11 points
       Date   : 2022-04-05 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (physicstoday.scitation.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (physicstoday.scitation.org)
        
       | exmadscientist wrote:
       | How do these people not have reclamation systems yet? Helium
       | supply has been constrained for years upon years and is not
       | really going to get fundamentally different in the future, so
       | reclamation is kind of a no-brainer. And helium is _gone forever_
       | if you don 't catch it on its way out the door: it does actually
       | escape the atmosphere. It's not like other resources that can be
       | theoretically later reclaimed from landfills and the like.
       | 
       | Now I am starting to see why the high vacuum/helium greybeards
       | back in grad school thought there should be criminal penalties
       | for wasting helium... the incentives here are just misaligned.
        
       | cinntaile wrote:
       | With all these fusion companies popping up... The energy in -
       | energy out might not work out (yet?) but why can't they supply
       | helium? I assume the reason is economics?
        
         | CamperBob2 wrote:
         | If you think about it, the quantities of helium that will be
         | produced by fusion reactors are necessarily extremely small.
         | E=mc^2 and all that.
         | 
         | The beamline at the LHC is "powered" by a hydrogen bottle the
         | size of a small fire extinguisher, as an example of the scales
         | involved.
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-05 23:02 UTC)