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Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

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Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#131
post #98

I remember hearing somewhere on this site that medical imaging got pretty good at building systems that recycle helium. Does chip manufacturing not do this or are the losses at their scale are still large enough that you need a substantial constant supply?

Some of the fabs do recycle as effectively as they can, but MRIs use it in a single process, in liquid form, in a relatively constrained container. Fabs use it for a variety of processes, ranging from wafer cooling to purging environments, to making ultra ultra clean chambers. The scale of what they use is higher, too, so even if an individual process is more efficiently recapturing helium, they might go through a few tons a day, with an MRI only using a few liters and losing 5% or less.

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#132
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the most disappointing things to me. These people have such resources and the limit of their vision is: bang young girls, accumulate bling, push divisive hateful politics, start wars. That's it. That's the best they can do. Even nominally selfish far-sighted things like genuinely funding a deep research program for life extension is not really something they're into. I mean some of them are "into" it in…

It's incredibly distressing, but I think the issue here lies with 'we'. Those at the very top are a very, shall we say, unique group. Those who seek power at such a level are not like the rest of us. There's established research showing that psychopathic and sociopathic traits are vastly more common among the "CEO class". It's not that wealth and power _makes_ them so, it's that relatively few are willing to be compl…

Are they unique? What would happen to an ordinary person if you gave them a billion dollars?

One of the things this does is gets you surrounded by supplicants and yes-men trying to tell you what you want to hear to get your money. It destroys social feedback. Nobody will tell you you're wrong. This is not good for mental health.

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

crypto-libertarian "government bad" ideology is one hell of a drug.

well it was signed into law by obama, so there's that.

yes the president is the law giver, he who conceives, imposes, and bears in perpetuity all responsibilities for all laws passed during his term

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#134

Aren’t there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like welding supply places.

not just. huge deposits opened (actively being exploited) up in colorado, utah in the past few years and Minnesota this year

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#136
post #51

Aren’t there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like welding supply places.

Balloon gas is ~20% oxygen, so your kids don't go unconscious while doing the funny voices.

This is very likely not true.

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#138
post #51

Aren’t there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like welding supply places.

Balloon gas is ~20% oxygen, so your kids don't go unconscious while doing the funny voices.

You sure about that? Everything I've ever heard says that balloon gas is generally grade 4, which is 99.99% pure. Not good enough for MRI, but quite a lot better than 80%.

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#139
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the main source of helium from oil production? It's not like we have fusion reactors turning H into He.

The main source of helium is natural gas production, not oil

Okay, but while technically correct, it does nothing to change the situation. They are punching holes in the ground to extract the sweet sweet nectar. They have to store what has been extracted. When that storage is full, what does one do? Stop the input into the storage.

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#140

Aren’t there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like welding supply places.

A lot of the balloon use has switched to nitrogen (helium became much, much more expensive after the strategic helium reserve was sold off)

Nitrogen? That's basically just air, what good would a balloon be using nitrogen? Might as well just blow it up with your lungs. It's certainly not going to float in any case.
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