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Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Helium
Did you know that the world is running out of helium? And if you know anything about 'Supply and Demand', that last sentence shouldn't make any sense. Why? Because, if the world is running out of helium, why can we still buy a balloon full of it for a couple of bucks instead of its current market price of $100? It turns out that the US controls 80% of the world's helium and for some reason, we passed a law in 1996 that requires that we sell our helium stockpile by 2015. And because the US is flooding the market, you can buy a balloon full of helium really cheap, but when we run out, that price is going to skyrocket. You are probably saying "big deal, when do we use helium other than when we inhale it to talk like Mickey Mouse?". Well, the problem is that we use helium for a multitude of other things like cooling MRI magnets, fiber optics, and LCD screens. So, when the US finally runs out of the stuff, the next time you need to have any medical procedure done that requires one of those fancy machines that the hospital uses, it will cost you a fortune (not that it's cheap now). Oh, and kids the world over will have birthdays without balloons. Just thought I should pass that along. (Also, I saw this video posted on Yahoo shortly after I wrote this post discussing the shortage.)
The whole helium thing is overblown. ha. It's really not that hard to produce helium by sucking it out of the atmosphere. The US is selling it's reserve stocks because it costs more to the government to store it than it does to produce it. The people writing the articles about running out of helium don't know what they are talking about.
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