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Helium is an essential material for research and medical equipment, but it’s nonrenewable and difficult to recycle (theconversation.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Helium is a byproduct of nuclear fusion, so in 50 years we should be rolling in it...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

Good idea but sadly not feasible

Relevant part (credit to [deleted] and u/chiagod):

Assuming D-T fusion, a single fusion event releases a 14.1MeV neutron and a 3.5MeV helium nucleus. Assuming you can absorb all this energy and you've got an efficient heat engine setup at around 50%, you'll get about 1.5x10^-12 J per fusion, so for a 1GW output you'll need 6.67x10^20 fusions per second. Say you have 1TWe (electric output) worth of fusion reactors worldwide (about half of current electricity generation), then you're producing 1000 times as much helium, or 6.67x10^23 atoms per second. About a mole each second, or 4 grams. This works out to 126 tons of helium a year, or about 1000m^3 per year of liquid helium. The US strategic helium reserve had a peak volume of about a billion m^3 . World consumption of helium is measured in tens of millions of m^3 per year so you'd be short by several orders of magnitude in the best case.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

/s? I feel like that tech has been "20 years away" for like 50 years now...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This graph shows projections for how long it was predicted to take to develop fusion power depending on the funding. Graph showing how long it should take to develop fusion power. There are five lines, "maximum effective effort" ending in 1990, "accelerated" in 1993, "aggressive" in 1998, "moderate" in 2005, and "fusion never" which never ends. The line showing actual funding is below "fusion never".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So if a billionaire actually decided to fund it, we might have it? It appears that the actual amount of funding is below the "fusion never" line.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

They'd have to throw in like 10 billion a year for over a decade, so we probably need a couple of the worlds richest billionaires

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Checks out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Helium is found adjacent to natural gas deposits which have formed in rock with a high uranium content. Over time, the uranium decays, and helium atoms are part of the result of that decay. Almost all of the world's helium comes from an area around San Antonio, Texas.