To sell off the supply, the US set the price cheap and demand soared. The US is still by far the biggest supplier of helium and produces about a third of the world’s supply. However, building the Federal Helium Reserve came at a cost and in 1996 the US passed the Helium Reserve Act and started selling off its helium to pay off the debt from building the storage facility. It is mostly stored at the Federal Helium Reserve run by the Bureau of Land Management in Amarillio, Texas. And since the 1920s, the US has stockpiled helium for commercial and military uses. In the early 20th century, large reserves of helium were found in natural gas fields in the US. Recently it has become all too apparent that our source of helium is finite and we have been lulled into a false sense of security. All other substitutes to helium solidify at this temperature, while helium remains liquid. MEG also has to be cooled to the same temperature. Only liquid helium can bring the temperature down to -269☌ (or 4 Kelvin), which is four degrees above absolute zero – the lowest possible temperature. To work, MRIs need to generate intense magnetic fields and the superconducting coil used to do this must be cooled down. Other techniques such as MagnetoEncephaloGraphy (MEG), which accurately maps the ultra-small magnetic fields inside the human brain, are also emerging and have provided additional insight into how our brains work.Īnd all these techniques use liquid helium. Recent advances in this technique have led to functional MRI, or fMRI, which can measure brain activity by looking at changes in bloodflow.
Without MRI’s we wouldn’t have made advances in how we treat brain tumours. One of helium’s primary uses in medical science is to cool Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners, which can produce complementary detailed images to X-rays. To me, helium is more valuable than gold. We use it for a whole vast array of things, from superconducting magnets to welding and rocketry. It’s particularly fantastic for science and medicine and has allowed us to make an enormous number of fundamental advances.
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