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The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried.(www.nbcnews.com)

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Square Singer@feddit.de
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But we are consuming about 6 million tons per year (https://www.chemanalyst.com/industry-report/helium-gas-market-578).

The 3000 tons are just a drop in the water and it’s pretty much impossible to get to all that.

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user134450@feddit.de
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oh i must have missed a few orders of magnitude there. 6Mt of helium is a ridiculous amount though … what is all that used for? according to WA that is about the water volume of the three gorges dam at STP

Edit: just read the report, wow, more than a quarter of all the helium is used just for “breathing mixes” which i assume means its for scuba diving.

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Square Singer@feddit.de
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There’s quite a large amount of the usage which could be labelled “for fun”.

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