by Jonathan Keim
Helium is back in the news. Again. And while the details have varied over the years, the bottom line is helium is in short supply and costs are rising. Depending on how we choose to count, this is the fourth major disruption to helium supplies since 2006. Contributing to our current situation is system maintenance at the US Federal Helium Reserve, maintenance at facilities in Qatar, fires at a production facility in Russia, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions.
All of this speaks to a few reasonable conclusions: these current disruptions can be expected to last a year or more and even when they subside, we should plan for them to return in some form or another in the not-too-distant future. This presents a challenging new landscape as helium is critical to numerous scientific processes and instrumentation. It is no longer prudent to assume we can shuffle our budgets and “weather the storm.”
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