this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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Given its scarcity, helium should be more expensive, to the point where filling party balloons with it is decadent profligacy.
I mean it is expensive, it's just the amount required for a balloon is insignificant and thus seems cheap.
As a diver who uses helium I can tell you it is, compared to air, so much more expensive they actually charge me for it (rather than just rolled into the cost of a dive) - to the sum of about $300 a dive - depending on depth.
What is helium used for when diving?
Reducing the amount of narcotic gases in your mix so you don't act like a drunk idiot when in a life threatening situation.
Those narcotic gases are nitrogen and oxygen (although there's only so little oxygen you can have....and also only so much!)
Edit: extra info: oxygen and nitrogen are narcotic at depth, nitrogen is better understood and so often we talk about nitrogen narcosis, which tends to start hitting people after about 30m, but each person reacts different and to different degrees at different deaths. I personally notice it at about 50m or so. If I was more relaxed while diving it'd probably hit me sooner.
Was that supposed to say depths?
Yes. Yes it was.
I've seen enough of YouTuber, Scary Interesting, to believe that either word would work!
A fellow cave diving accident creepypasta enjoyer
Enough to make me never want to even attempt such a thing, myself! But I did know of the helium ratio stuff because of it, so it's still educational content.
His videos actually helped me get into free diving, believe it or not. Still not touching cave diving with a 10ft pole, though
::visibly shutters::
Awesome thank you!
Most welcome! I can talk endlessly about diving so welcome the question.
I added an edit with some more information incase you're more curious.
Are there other gasses that could be used. E.g some of the noble gasses like argon or neon?
Ah very interesting, and yes theoretically I believe. Some people are experimenting with other gases due to the price and low availability of Helium.
Rebreathers are becoming a lot more accessible these days and so are making dives much cheaper, but they're still $20k so it takes a while to recoup the cost.
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argox
Hydrogen is used at extreme depths, but isn't so good at moderate depths, and has its own issues, like being flammable as all fuck
Good news everyone! Our national helium reserves have been privatized! Expect rising helium prices soon.
Privatization seems like a really bad idea to me. Helium is non-renewable resource. Privatization is about being 'efficient' at maximising profits. Do you think the people / companies that own the helium reserves are going to be interested in keeping helium available for centuries in the future? I'd say probably not.
For a profit based company, the only motivation to preserve the helium for future use is that maybe it will be worth a lot more money in the future. But there are two big problems with that. Firstly, the timescale is likely to be too long for the profit to be of interest. And secondly, the main reason the price would go up is scarcity; and that scarcity will come sooner if the helium is wasted in the short term. (Unless one company actually has a monopoly on helium, in which case they can create artificial scarcity by just not selling it. But that would obviously be bad for other reasons.)
The thing with helium though is that it's already privatized. The geologic formations that trap helium from uranium and thorium decay are the exact formations that trap fossil fuels, particularly natural gas. Whether it's worth it to capture that helium is purely market driven by private interests. Most of it is just off gassed into space instead of separated. All that government production has amounted to is making helium cheap enough to put in balloons and use on wasteful cryo applications with no recovery mechanism like it was subsidized, making separating it from natural gas uneconomical. Increasing the price would decrease the monumental waste we already do.
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/60/12/10/413018/Helium-scarcity-blamed-on-waste