alt Hacker NewsAren’t there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like welding supply places.
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All natural gas deposits contain helium at various concentrations, it's only commercially worth harvesting above a certain percentage but speculate the problem is the US can't just fill the Qatar loss in supply immediately since we have plentiful natural gas.
Depending on who you go to, some places will not sell you tanks of Helium. We did a balloon launch expecting to use Hydrogen because Helium was going to be problematic. The sales rep at the supply place took a look at the group of us knuckleheads with absolutely no Hydrogen experience and ended up selling us the Helium while also exchanging all of our connectors. Hydrogen tanks use specific connectors different from all other tanks to make using a hydrogen take by mistake very difficult. I was nervous about using hydrogen and had no issue with the higher price for the helium knowing I wasn't going to catch on fire.
Balloon gas is ~20% oxygen, so your kids don't go unconscious while doing the funny voices.
not just. huge deposits opened (actively being exploited) up in colorado, utah in the past few years and Minnesota this year
A lot of the balloon use has switched to nitrogen (helium became much, much more expensive after the strategic helium reserve was sold off)
Good old JIT stock management for essential materials, right?
One’d think that they’d keep more than a couple of weeks’s supply of critical materials —too bad many copied Cook’s and others’s JIT inventory management for everything.
Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
Helium for party balloons is low grade and not pure enough for chip fab use, so stacking up birthday tanks won't keep TSMC running. Industrial grade helium has a restricted and oddly international supply chain thanks to regulation and a few weirdly-placed depots. The US 'helium stockpile' isn't really a menu you can just order from when a factory across the planet runs dry, especially if offtakes and logistics are tied up by decade-old government contracts. If you want to see supply chain fragility, try pricing MRI-grade helium after a shutdown and watch everyone in medical procurement panic quitely.