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| Please clue me in about Helium Mining |
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| Someone:
--- Quote from: Gyro on February 19, 2022, 08:18:52 pm ---Damn, I was just going to go off on a rant about Helium being a finite mined resource, being increasingly vital for MRIs etc. and people still wasting it on party balloons. :D --- End quote --- Posts in general forum, expects users to have knowledge of niche Blockchain applications. lol Helium mining is a thing, people intercept a natural gas source that has "high" amounts of helium in it, then extract that valuable component with traditional fractionation (entirely familiar to the fossil fuel industry that is extracting the natural gas). Analogous to "regular" mining and extraction from ore. But seems some crypto bunch wanted to misappropriate the term. |
| Gyro:
Yes, I knew it was an underground resource, the thing that surprises me is that it didn't all percolate to the surface and disappear to space Millions of years ago. I think it's a natural radioactivity decay product though, so there is maybe there is still some ongoing creation. I hadn't realised that it came up with fossil fuels, although it makes sense that it would accumulate in the tops of other gas reservoirs in the strata. I've never heard of it being a by-product of North Sea gas, maybe it only occurs in certain fields - I believe the US has the biggest stockpile. Sorry, OT but much more interesting than the original topic. Edit: I should have checked Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium |
| Someone:
--- Quote from: Gyro on February 20, 2022, 01:36:14 pm ---Yes, I knew it was an underground resource, the thing that surprises me is that it didn't all percolate to the surface and disappear to space Millions of years ago. I think it's a natural radioactivity decay product though, so there is maybe there is still some ongoing creation. I hadn't realised that it came up with fossil fuels, although it makes sense that it would accumulate in the tops of other gas reservoirs in the strata. I've never heard of it being a by-product of North Sea gas, maybe it only occurs in certain fields - I believe the US has the biggest stockpile. Sorry, OT but much more interesting than the original topic. Edit: I should have checked Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium --- End quote --- Like oil and mining in general, there are lots of known sources but many of them are uneconomic to extract (at current commodity prices). If natural gas production starts declining then there will be even more upward pressure on helium pricing. The ex US strategic stockpile is a bizarre market force and has kept prices artificially low, Gas is a huge business right now although its not being put under the same "evil" branding as coal or oil. World energy extraction (2019): Oil190 EJCoal168 EJGas144 EJRenewables36 EJ (blurry, depends on accounting for burning of plants)Nuclear30 EJ At some point hydrogen will become so much cheaper that people will accept its flammability and start using it instead. Obligatory electrical reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-cooled_turbo_generator |
| MathWizard:
As a gamer I hate cyrptominers, buying all our GPUs and helping make the prices go insanse again, like the early days of discrete GPUs. |
| NiHaoMike:
--- Quote from: MathWizard on February 27, 2022, 01:29:16 pm ---As a gamer I hate cyrptominers, buying all our GPUs and helping make the prices go insanse again, like the early days of discrete GPUs. --- End quote --- Good thing Helium doesn't use GPUs. I would like to see an energy efficient cryptocurrency succeed in the long run, I have mined many energy efficient cryptocurrencies over the years (mostly using cheap smartphones) but so far, none have achieved much popularity. |
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