• threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    I suspect that the frivolousness with which we currently release waste helium will look pretty stupid future generations. Wherever liquid helium is used as a coolant, we should be installing recovery systems to capture and recondense the helium. With the appropriate safety precautions, hydrogen can be used as a lifting gas for blimps and balloons. I can’t think of any applications which require helium to be released into the atmosphere to float away into space forever.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You’re forgetting that the act of science is political, in the sense that science must be conducted under the existing political framework. The very easy solution of recapturing helium is more expensive than just letting it float off.

    • steventhedev@lemmy.world
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      11 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.

      • Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz
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        11 months ago

        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".

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          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.

          • Cort@lemmy.world
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            11 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

    • Nougat@kbin.social
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      11 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.

  • MalReynolds@slrpnk.net
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    11 months ago

    Can we please either stop using floating balloons or replace with hydrogen already, sooo stupid.

    • Yaysuz@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Hydrogen balloons are dangerous. I say this as someone who handles them relatively often. One blast can seriously damage your hearing if you are standing next to it. And they explode easily, too.

    • Midnitte@beehaw.org
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      11 months ago

      Not possible for certain things, plus hydrogen in balloons is dangerous.

      It’s needed to super cool magnets in NMR (and MRI), and it’s heavily used as a carrier gas in GC (where hydrogen is used as the flame gas).

      Many GC methods could have helium replaced with nitrogen, but the difference in gas performance means updating every method with tedious work.

      For NMR, there is no alternative, just varying degrees of effectiveness in how you use helium.

      • MalReynolds@slrpnk.net
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        11 months ago

        I was specifically talking about novelty balloons. Personally I think the danger is overblown in most situations, small rising pop (perhaps of flame), but if you have a problem with that, use air… with the goal of saving it for more important uses, like some of your examples. Blimps are another egregious waste, especially if usage scales up they need to be engineered for sustainable hydrogen.

        • cobra89@beehaw.org
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          11 months ago

          Someone needs to make a “balloon” you fill with normal air and then has a rechargable battery and 4 drone propellers to make it float up.

          The balloon lasts much longer than a helium balloon, only downside is you have to charge it and it’s noisy.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      The Hindenburg was a giant zeppelin 🎶 It’s engineers made a minor oversight

      Before filling it with explosive gas they should have fixed the “no smoking” light

  • Chef@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Lithium fission is being explored for subcritical reactors. The fission of lithium ions by bombarding them with neutrons results in excess energy, tritium atoms, and helium atoms.

    It would be an amazing thing if widespread energy generation via subcritical fission of lithium also helped solve the “finite helium” problem.

    Imagine a world where old lithium batteries can be recycled and create H^3 and He^4 and also generate clean energy.

      • Chef@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        I defer to your expertise as I only read an article about Lithium fission and know my knowledge is limited.

        • roguetrick@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          I somehow deleted my comments when I meant to edit them, but I found the article you were talking about. They’re using Lithium-7 and not Lithium-6 it seems. It sounds like they’re proposing on using a radioisotope like americium from a nuclear reactor as their neutron source, which really won’t create a lot of power and doesn’t seem at all economical to me. Otherwise I really don’t see how they’re getting more power out than they put in with something like a particle accelerator.

          https://rfsuny.portals.in-part.com/xDOgwnzONKvX

  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    You can make it in unlimited abundance in fusion reactors. The difficulty in fusion wasn’t producing elements, it was doing so profitably, and now even that’s starting to crack. You can even make a novelty fusion reactor on your desk if you wanted to, it isn’t exactly hard.