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

tomshardware.com

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

#291

Post by pocksuppet »

breppp wrote: post #95
nottorp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if there's an active shooter on the one alley to your workplace you should still be at work in time, right? :) Or let's make the analogy clearer: if your Uber driver cancels the ride because there's an active shooter on the only road between him and you, it's their fault not the shooter's?

no, but if two ships were hit, while one clearly by mistake, it is very early to say the straits are going to be closed as opposed to incorrect targeting your analogies have went past me though, generally although a common misconception, countries are not people and wars are not comparable to crime

The active shooter is shooting a specific group of people who don't include you. Will you walk past?

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

#293

Post by fc417fc802 »

MOSI2 wrote: post #215
tencentshill wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is to keep the oil in the ground, to not be burned or to be made into plastics.

It's not just plastics. Practically every substance we use and rely on to maintain civilisation as we know it has a petrochemical or fossil fuel base. I understand the not burning fossil fuel thing, but why can't it be seen like another mineral resource?

Because that's still geological carbon entering the overall cycle on the surface. The air and ocean are giant buffers of it. When it's needed it needs to be pulled from there somehow (such as by felling trees or directly extracting CO2). Unfortunately that's not economical when it's legal to tap the giant lakes of it sitting underground.

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

#294

Post by smackeyacky »

erxam wrote: post #221
smackeyacky wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer isn’t less voters, it’s more. Australia’s compulsory voting system has successfully taken the edge off extremist ideology.

Not quite sure this works out as nicely as that. Argentina has both compulsory voting and a legal voting age of 16 and it managed to produce Javier Milei (who makes Trump look like Kissinger). What's the best way to have a sane system? I'm not sure. I personally lost all faith in democracy.

Argentina is notoriously corrupt and suffers from an overly politically powerful military. Not even compulsory voting can fix those. There are dark private forces currently waging war on democracy it will be a catastrophic disaster if they win.

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

#295

Post by yks »

GeorgeWBasic wrote: post #209
MengerSponge wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even have to scare everyone. You just have to scare the insurers. Without insurance ships won't sail. The exposure is huge , so a small blip in risk makes all the modeling go kerplooie. Traffic stopped when the insurers said drop the anchors. To restore traffic, we need that risk to return to previous levels, which requires diplomacy and trust. I don't expect resolution any time soon.

Impeachment, and then we could get there. It's not impossible.

With JD Vance things will go even worse

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

#296

Post by pbmonster »

boredatoms wrote: post #250
throwup238 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem is purity. Fabs use grade 5 and 6 helium where contaminants are 1-10 parts per billion. The infrastructure to get it that pure becomes very specialized and any time the helium goes through a process it picks up so much contamination that recycling it would require the entire purifying and quality control infrastructure for pressure or temperature swing adsorption. Some fabs are starting to reuse heliu…

Do we have a process to make new helium from hydrogen?

If you want to make new helium, it's far easier to go the other way.

You just need quite a bit of Polonium, Thorium or Radon. Put it in a pool - and then wait a while. You just gotta collect what bubbles to the surface.

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

#297

Post by amatecha »

ceejayoz wrote: post #226
jason_s wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

after what kind of shutdown?

If the helium gets warm, you have to vent it outside before it goes kaboom from the pressure. https://radiology.ucsf.edu/patient-care/patient-safety/mri-s...

Damn, that's intense:

> If the scan room door is closed when a quench occurs and helium escapes into the scan room, the depletion of oxygen causes a critical increase in pressure in the room compared with the control area. This produces high pressure in the scan room, which may prevent opening of the door. If this should happen, the glass partition between the scan and control rooms should be broken to release the pressure. The scan room door can then be opened as usual and the patient evacuated. In such a case the patient should be immediately evacuated and evaluated for asphyxia, hypothermia and ruptured eardrums.

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

#298

Post by jiggawatts »

hrmtst93837 wrote: post #118
trollbridge wrote: post #7

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.

[flagged]

Isn't Helium one of the easiest elements to purify? Just cool it below 14 Kelvin, which will make everything else freeze out. Collect the remaining liquid, which should be pure Helium.

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

#299

Post by fc417fc802 »

dylan604 wrote: post #139
ac29 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The amount of activity required for helium is insubstantial compared to the amount of natural gas being extracted globally. And the amount of natural gas extracted pales in comparison to total combined gas, oil, and coal.

Helium extraction doesn't pose a notable environmental issue on its own.

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

#300

Post by ScoobleDoodle »

randerson wrote: post #150

I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to upgrade.

I have a UPS with surge protection which I plug my computer into for this reason. Do others do the same or use something else?
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