iopredman

Agreed on all fronts. I think the helium from nuclear decay, though, is not occurring at a rate that is longterm sustainable for us. As in, once we exhaust that which is trapped in the earth along with natural gas, I wonder how much is freshly generated per year and if it would meet demands. I admit I don't know.

I hope storage makes the issue occur much further out, but even if we are very conservative and store a LOT of helium, small leakages and accidents over the course of centuries might deplete that which is conserved.

I guess then the question becomes, will that which is naturally/intentionally produced by radioactive processes be enough to keep up with losses due to leakage. I would guess yes but again I don't know. Will have to do more reading. Thanks!

Good Morning! Certain particle detector projects are employeeing vast amount of inert gasses such as Argon, on the order of 1/10 of the yearly global demand. How has/will this effect the future of gas separations when the rarer gasses go up in demand relative to the more abundant ones? Are companies such as yourself taking active steps to prepare for these upcoming projects, or is the infrastructure already in place to satisfy these projects?

Thanks!

Also NMR!

The problem is that helium, being the lightest atmospheric gas, literally gets flung into space and lost from the atmosphere, so the worry is not that we will have no ready supply of it in 50 or 100 years, but in 200 or 300 years, our only source could be fusion/decay products. It is this case that people are concerned about, although perhaps not all, as you said.

It is one of the future science problems I think about the most. Imagine giant helium harvesting farms orbiting the sun. I think it may be a realistic solution since the amount of power we will need from nuclear fusion will not even come close to meeting the world demand for helium.