AS a campaign slogan, Save the Helium Reserve may not have quite the ring of Save the Whales, but it has become the rallying cry of the American Physical Society.
Robert Park, a spokesman for the APS, says that with the use of helium rising by 10 per cent a year, keeping the helium reserve 鈥渕akes a lot more sense than storing gold in Fort Knox鈥� because the price of helium could soar if supplies run low. The problem is how to convince politicians to support the reserve.
Politicians have jumped on the helium reserve as a prime example of expensive and unnecessary government programmes. This autumn, Congress passed a budget bill requiring the government to sell all 900 million cubic metres of helium in the reserve by 2015. Although President Clinton vetoed that bill for other reasons, he supports closing the reserve.
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Critics say that current reserves could supply all the helium the government needs for the next century, and that the programme is $1.4 billion in debt. The APS, however, argues that the present supply 鈥渉as severe natural limits鈥�, and that the debt is a budgetary illusion.
The public thinks helium is used for 鈥渢he Goodyear blimp and party balloons鈥�, says Park. In reality, he says 鈥渓ifting鈥� consumes less than 10 per cent of the 92 million cubic metres of helium the US produces a year. A quarter is used for cryogenics because helium is the only inert gas to stay liquid at the low temperatures required for today鈥檚 superconducting electromagnets. The rest is used to provide inert atmospheres for industrial processes.
Helium is extracted from natural gas. Some American wells yield a few per cent helium, but they are expected to be exhausted in a couple of decades. Gas fields outside the US typically yield less than 0.1 per cent helium, making extraction much more expensive.