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Everything a Normal Person Needs to Know About Helium

2021-11-12 · explainer · Hank · 3:48 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Explainer · tags: self promotion, fundraising ask

Hank explains why helium is special (unreactive, tiny, nearly unfreezable) and widely used, and argues the 'running out of helium' story is half true: it comes as a vented byproduct of natural gas and a US reserve sell-off crashed prices, but dedicated drilling and new reserves have ended the shortage for now.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why helium is special: unreactive, tiny and light, the least sticky and hardest-to-freeze substance

  • ★★ Hank says helium is very weird and he's tired of people being wrong about it, so he explains what a normal person needs to know about it in four minutes. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says helium and its noble gas siblings are extremely unreactive: for physics reasons they are extremely stable atoms that do not chemically react. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says helium has a very small atom, smaller only than hydrogen's, so it is physically small and light. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says helium barely interacts with anything, even itself, so it liquefies only when very cold, basically never solidifies, and is the hardest thing in the universe to freeze. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank says helium is useful for far more than party balloons, e.g. in rocket engines to push cryofuels like liquid oxygen and hydrogen without reacting or freezing. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — Uses of helium: rocket engines, MRI magnets, leak detection, semiconductor manufacturing and welding

  • ★★ Hank says liquid helium, which won't freeze even at absolute zero, is used to cool superconducting magnets in MRIs and other scientific equipment. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank says helium finds tiny leaks in pipes and spacesuits because its atoms pass through the smallest fractures, and shields semiconductor manufacturing and welding from oxygen. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Are we running out? Helium escapes the atmosphere, comes from natural gas, is mostly vented; the US reserve sell-off; drilling for helium

  • ★ Hank says no single use is the biggest piece of the helium-use pie: it is used in many things. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ Hank says the claim that we are running out of helium is kind of true but also kind of not. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Hank says a quarter of the known matter in the universe is helium, but on Earth atmospheric helium rises and is knocked away by high-energy particles from the Sun, lost for good. — 00:01:27 · Earth
  • ★★ Hank says the helium we use was trapped underground after radioactive elements decayed into other elements. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ Hank says the formations that trap helium often trap natural gas, so basically all our helium is a byproduct of extracting natural gas for stoves and heating. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ Hank says most helium pulled out of the ground in natural gas is vented, not captured, because capturing it is very energy intensive. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ Hank says the US had a gigantic strategic helium reserve, and Congress ordered it to sell all its helium by a set date at any price, tanking helium prices so gas producers had no incentive to refine helium. — 00:01:56 · United States Congress, United States
  • ★★ Hank says that as the reserve's supply was sold off, which he thinks is now finished, and as applications grew, more helium is being captured. (hedged) — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Hank says the bad news is that the long-term goal is to leave natural gas in the ground, because it and its combustion products are warming the Earth. — 00:02:26 · climate change, Earth
  • ★★ Hank says that now, for about the first time ever, people are drilling specifically for helium, which need not come with natural gas. — 00:02:26

00:02:55 — New reserves in Tanzania, Canada and Australia; the shortage appears over; recapture and reuse

  • ★★★ Hank says helium drilling found a reserve in Tanzania big enough to fill 1.5 million MRI machines, with more resources found in Canada and Australia. — 00:02:55 · Canada, Australia
  • ★★★ Hank says that with pandemic-induced drops in consumption and new production coming online, the helium shortage appears to be over. (hedged) — 00:02:55 · COVID-19 pandemic
  • ★★ Hank says many helium users, including MRIs, rocket launches and manufacturing, are finding ways to capture and reuse it, since helium is not used up. — 00:02:55

00:03:24 — Good-news conclusion, sign-off and an Awesome Socks Club postscript

  • ★★★ Hank concludes with good news: we can all probably be a little less concerned about at least this one thing. (hedged) — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Asked (in his own voice) why he didn't mention the Awesome Socks Club, Hank says it is going very well and he thinks it will sell out within two days, before sales stop Sunday (14 November 2021) at midnight. (hedged) — 00:03:24 · Awesome Socks Club
  • ★★ Hank tells viewers who want to sign up for the Awesome Socks Club that there's a link in the description. — 00:03:24 · Awesome Socks Club

In the description and comments

  • ★ The description adds deep-water diving as a helium use: divers mix it into breathing gas because nitrogen is more soluble in blood and under pressure causes nitrogen narcosis. — video description
  • ★ The description recommends a Planet Money episode on helium among its sources. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: helium

Also: Projects: Awesome Socks Club

Organizations: Federal Helium Reserve · United States Congress

Concepts: climate change · hydrogen · magnetic resonance imaging · natural gas · noble gas · radioactive decay

Places: Australia · Canada · Earth · Sun (star) · Tanzania · United States

Events: COVID-19 pandemic

Only in the description or credits: Planet Money

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