A Lighter Topic

When I was a delegate to the Minnesota Fourth District Republican convention in 1980, delegates discussed resolutions submitted by precinct caucuses. I've forgotten all but one of these resolutions, though I'm sure the majority of them were about taxes and abortion. The only one I remember advocated the government take steps to prevent the helium that occurred in natural gas deposits from simply being wasted.

"This is a joke, right?" everyone said, laughing. Well, 32 years later, it's not a joke. We're now experiencing a helium shortage.

Helium might be the second most common element in the universe, but it's the second lightest, and that's the problem. Earth's original supply long ago left for space: as a noble gas it doesn't form compounds. When it hits the atmosphere it goes straight up, and the heat of the sun imparts enough velocity to helium atoms to make them escape earth's grasp. Hydrogen and heavier gases such as nitrogen and oxygen escape much more slowly, as they generally form heavy compounds like water, O2, O3, CO2, and NO2. UV  dissociates water vapor high in the atmosphere and sizable quantities of hydrogen also escape — but we've got lots of it. Atmospheric escape is why earth and Venus have thick atmospheres and Mars has a very thin one.

The problem is, helium isn't just for recreational purposes such party balloons, talking like Donald Duck and the Goodyear blimp. It has many uses that save lives, most of which involve cooling. Liquid helium is used in the giant magnets found in MRI machines. It's used in physics research. It's used in processes for making semiconductors for smart phones. It's used in submarine detectors employed by the Navy. Gaseous helium is used for weather sounding balloons, critical for hurricane tracking and climate research.

Helium is found with natural gas, and that's partly responsible for the helium shortage. With fracking the price of methane has dropped through the floor, and that means there's less natural gas production in helium rich deposits, which depresses helium production. New helium is "made" deep underground by the radioactive decay of elements like uranium, thorium, actinium and radium. The decay releases an alpha particle, which is a helium ion (an atom with no electrons). The helium eventually makes its way into natural gas reserves which we extract. That's a very slow and indirect process.

The other reason there's a helium shortage is a Republican privatization effort launched in 1996. The Helium Privatization Act was basically a give-away of America's helium reserves to private industry. Instead of being auctioned, the Republican bill required that all helium in the reserve be sold by 2015, priced with a formula set "in consultation" with the helium industry. That caused artificially low prices, which encouraged over-consumption of helium and discouraged new production.

Republicans will be sure to blame government for the problem in the first place, but the reason Calvin Coolidge approved the National Helium Reserve in 1925 was for national defense, to ensure we had enough for airships (used for aerial observation). Helium was also important for cooling during the Cold War and the Space Race, as liquid-fueled ballistic missiles use helium as a pressurant because it's inert.

The Republican Party of Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and even Calvin Coolidge believed that we should protect and conserve our natural resources. Somewhere in the 1980s the Republicans lost their way and began to equate wastefulness and ostentatious displays of profligacy to freedom and prosperity.

The attitude became "someone could be getting rich today, we shouldn't save this oil — this forest — this helium — for a rainy day." The so-called conservatives decided that conserving things was for suckers and sold out to wastrels and get-rich-quick con men.

Unbridled consumption may enrich the few, but it beggars the nation's future.