In a recent study, researchers from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) questioned the planned development of new nuclear capacities in the energy strategies of the United States and certain European countries.
Helium is the only element in the periodic table that is non renewable.
idk how accurate this is but i’ve heard a tale, that the military is hoarding all it can and pumping it waaaay underground to store what’s left… but i still keep seeing dollar stores and walmart selling cans and pumping up balloons… i am not familiar with the raw process of capturing/mining helium enough to say anything about it.
Different isotypes the one you buy for baloons is not the same type thags used in nuclear reactors
There was a strategic helium reserve that the US government operated, but it was defunded and drawn down to depletion because of capitalism (gov’t doing it means corpos can’t make $$$ doing the same thing for twelve times the price).
The National Helium Reserve was started in the 1920s to store helium for military airships and barrage balloons; but airplane technology got a lot better and so we don’t use airships or even many balloons for military purposes anymore. So the original purpose of the reserve never turned out to be all that useful.
Helium is found alongside natural gas, and there is still plenty of helium production in the US. Until we get a real room-temperature superconductor, every MRI machine consumes liquid helium for cooling. This and other industrial uses make it profitable for natural gas producers to keep extracting helium.