Why Is There A Helium Shortage?

Erica Calman
Erica Calman
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Published 2024-03-01
It's depressing and stupid but also interesting. Basically it's really useful and there's only a couple of sources in the world which have been grossly mismanaged. It's the only refrigerant than can get close to absolute zero in temperature though.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_Privatization_Act_of_…

Also I put it as text in the video but liquid helium-4 (the normal isotope of helium) can get down to 2.7 Kevin, and gaseous helium can get down to about 1 kelvin. There is also a system called a dilution refrigerator that I’d love to discuss in the future which uses a mixture of helium-3 and helium-4 isotopes to get to a few milikelvin.
All Comments (6)
  • @agxryt
    Erica, if we manage to conquer commercial fusion, is there a future where Helium production could be a part of that? It's really abundant in the universe, iirc (e- i checked, 24% of total elemental mass), seems a bit unfortunate we have so little of it here.
  • @Ted_Youtuber
    Just discovered this channel!, I honestly learnt a lot about helium..I have a question tho..Why dont we just suck helium out of all those balloons haha
  • @radwizard
    You haven't heard the news coming out of Minnesota.