7/3/2023 0 Comments Helium shortage![]() ![]() “And there’s a lot of subtle things going on with climate change where we need to have a lot of data over years to tease out and diagnose how all of this is working.” “We can’t go back and get that data later, right? If you don’t launch the balloon then you don’t have the data,” Yuter said. Sandra Yuter, a professor of atmospheric science at North Carolina State University, said the result is gaps in data that’s needed to understand and predict climate change. The National Weather Service has been cutting back on launches since March to conserve the gas. “That means if you’re viewed as less critical, your allocation could be even worse.”įor climate researchers, worse helium allocations mean fewer weather balloon launches. “Suppliers are managing this by prioritizing certain customers because they are a medical application or a critical infrastructure thing like a nuclear power plant,” Kornbluth said. Still, it could take months for supplies to be back to normal. Kornbluth said we’ve already seen the peak of this shortage and predicted that the Texas plant could be back online any day now. “So, instead of getting a large new supply onto the market, we got nothing,” said Kornbluth. “That’s taken more than 10% of the world’s supply off the market,” Kornbluth said.Īnd the Russian government’s plan to get a new plant up and running in Siberia this spring didn’t exactly pan out. That plant has been offline since January because of understaffing and safety concerns. comes from a federally run plant in Texas, according to Phil Kornbluth, president of Kornbluth Helium Consulting. That would be a massive disruption to the research that relies on these instruments, and replacing them could cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. “It’s possible that it could be damaged and you may not be able to bring it back again,” Eastman said. “Getting a fraction of what you normally use, it’s just not possible to maintain your magnets.”Įastman said it’s dangerous for these magnets to sit in just a shallow pool of liquid helium - or none at all. “When I first heard that we were going to get 65% of what we normally buy, I just said ‘This is not going to work,’” said Margaret Eastman, who manages that facility. Other labs have been much worse off, including the NMR facility at Oklahoma State University. It doesn’t necessarily come exactly when we want it, but we’ve been able to get enough to fill the magnets.” “We’ve been able to get about 80% of the helium we’ve ordered. “We’ve been really lucky so far,” Smith said, knocking on the wooden doorframe. Scientists, who use helium to keep their cryogenic instruments cold and their research balloons afloat, are at the back of the line. and around the world have left a number of industries competing for a limited supply: healthcare, tech and manufacturing to name a few. And lately, replacing it isn’t easy.ĭisruptions at helium processing plants in the U.S. So, when it evaporates out of these instruments, it disappears into the atmosphere forever. ![]() Liquid helium is the only substance on earth that can keep the magnets as cold as they need to be: 450º below zero.Īnother thing that’s unique about helium is that it’s extremely light. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometers, or NMRs, help researchers determine the molecular structure of everything from new medicines to building materials. And because they’re sitting in liquid helium, they’ve got a lot of electricity running through them which means they can generate very strong magnetic fields,” Smith said. “You’re going to want to stay fairly close to the door,” Smith said, in case the powerful magnets inside those instruments could mess with my recording equipment. Inside, three white cylinders on blue legs that looked sort of like nine-foot-tall cousins of R2-D2 were humming away. In the basement of the University of New Mexico’s chemistry building, Karen Smith punched in the code to get into the lab she manages. ![]()
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