Helium reserves have been in deficit for years, and this is not only an issue for balloons. The BBC provided the issue with a detailed, in-depth article that looked at the industries in which this gas is a key resource and tried to understand how to cope with it in the future. We shall start by saying that hospitals are the world’s largest consumers of helium (amounting to 32% of total consumption) and use it basically to cool important diagnostic devices such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. Helium is also used in the production of semiconductors (computer chips) and for operating superconductors used at Cern.
It’s also used to cool satellite instruments and to pre-clean rocket engines. And scuba divers use it to control the oxygen and nitrogen ratio they inhale to prevent decompression sickness. And finally, helium is the gas that inflates the airbag when we crash. And naturally, we do use it for balloons, of course.
Helium is so prevalent because it is “a magical element”, stated Sophia Hayes, a Washington University in St. Louis professor of chemistry, to the BBC. “There is nothing like it in the Universe. It is odourless, very light and, unlike another light element such as hydrogen, does not ignite. It liquefies at incredibly low temperatures (-269 degrees) and can be used almost everywhere.”
But it is extremely difficult to find it in nature: it is made either inside stars (nuclear fusion) or on the Earth’s crust. We cannot utilise the first variant, so we utilise the second one: we drill the Earth and bring it with natural gas, but thus far, only some companies in the world work with it. We are still not able to make it artificially, so it remains a scarce resource. It is not cooperative either: it is difficult to store and manipulate, and since it is so adaptable, it leaks even from small cracks and openings.
Dry Helium
It has become harder to find it since 2006. The latest shortage began in January 2022, slowed down in 2023, but left a largely precarious situation, driven by growing demand: demand for the gas will double by 2035, due to its central role in the production of semiconductors, aerospace and medical applications. There are three explanations for the 2022 crisis. A succession of blazes at a big Russian gas plant in the Siberian Amur oblast (province). The Ukraine war severed supplies (at the same moment that one plant in Qatar was shut down for scheduled maintenance). The closure of the US National Helium Reserve, an American strategic reserve, during the summer of 2021 and for four months in late January 2022. The reserve holds 10% of global helium production capacity and was sold in 2024 to German industrial gas company Messer.
However, the US remains the leader in this industry, with about 46% of the global helium supply, followed by Qatar (38%) and Algeria (5%). However, with such enormous uncertainty of reserves, research, commercial, and clinical institutions are looking for more sustainable ways of utilising helium. This is not simple. Let it be enough that an average MRI machine requires approximately 2,000 litres of helium to cool down its superconducting magnets. In case there are leaks, the helium must be refilled to avoid overheating the equipment and wasting everything.
There are some solutions instead
In the past few years, a new generation of Mri’s have arrived that consume a lot less gas: just one litre to operate within a sealed system so they do not leak. They are new and costly machinery, and it will cost a long time and a lot of money to replace the 35,000 MRI machines on the planet. Other research labs are examining methods of eliminating the use of helium by developing superconducting materials that do not require cooling to too low a temperature. And finally, there are developing systems to recycle and recover the gas rather than waste it.
The silver lining is that the world’s largest reserve of helium was discovered in Tanzania in 2016. It will go into production this year. There have been other discoveries of reserves in the Bohai Bay basin in China. However, the problem of scarcity persists. “Imagine there wasn’t enough helium, and your grandmother couldn’t get her MRI because the superconductor used by Mri died,” said Nancy Washton, a researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “This is a serious issue, and we must fix it.”
