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Posted by johnbarron 7 hours ago

Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock(www.tomshardware.com)
184 points | 161 comments
randerson 34 minutes ago|
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.
SlightlyLeftPad 21 minutes ago||
Silver lining: literally all Macs are a total steal right now.
Joel_Mckay 9 minutes ago||
Good Mac Pro models are still spendy, but the M3/M4 laptops are great if your software use-cases are met. =3
Joel_Mckay 12 minutes ago||
We used those Tripp Lite LC1200 to knock down the noise floor (14dB) on remote equipment.

These line-conditioners actually perform well given the cost, but never buy used surge-arresters given the finite spike hit-count. Best of luck =3

abeppu 3 hours ago||
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?
throwup238 6 minutes ago||
The big problem is purity. Fabs use grade 5 and 6 purity 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 helium in downstream processes but there’s only so much they can do without expanding their core competency into yet another complex chemical manufacturing process.

MRI machines don’t need high purity helium and the contamination doesn’t “gunk up” all the tools so it’s not an issue to recycle it there.

observationist 1 hour ago||
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.
CrzyLngPwd 13 minutes ago||
This is, according to Hegseth, just something they planned for, since they knew what was going to happen.
jiggawatts 1 minute ago|
I had an eye opening discussion with an IT admin who stated with a straight face that their “patching strategy was not to patch”.

They have a patch strategy! They considered requirements when deciding the strategy! They have a documented strategy, it’s just very brief. (“Don’t.”)

The Trump admin may have similarly thought about this issue for a few seconds, shrugged their shoulders and decided that this might force manufacturers to go on-shore.

You and I know it won’t, certainly not in the immediate future, which means massive disruption to industry, but that’s not the same as “no plan”.

arunc 5 hours ago||
So the RAM prices are going to skyrocket again?
HerbManic 1 hour ago|
Of course, everything at the moment regardless of good or bad means higher RAM price.
trollbridge 6 hours ago||
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.
hrmtst93837 1 hour ago||
Helium for party balloons is low grade and not pure enough for chip fab use, so stacking up birthday tanks won't keep TSMC running. Industrial grade helium has a restricted and oddly international supply chain thanks to regulation and a few weirdly-placed depots. The US 'helium stockpile' isn't really a menu you can just order from when a factory across the planet runs dry, especially if offtakes and logistics are tied up by decade-old government contracts. If you want to see supply chain fragility, try pricing MRI-grade helium after a shutdown and watch everyone in medical procurement panic quitely.
stevenwoo 21 minutes ago|||
All natural gas deposits contain helium at various concentrations, it's only commercially worth harvesting above a certain percentage but speculate the problem is the US can't just fill the Qatar loss in supply immediately since we have plentiful natural gas.
emsign 5 hours ago|||
Balloon gas is ~20% oxygen, so your kids don't go unconscious while doing the funny voices.
kerridge0 3 minutes ago|||
I believe that that's the stuff you buy in the shop, the non-refillable containers. If you buy a proper refillable balloon gas cylinder it's the higher grade stuff. Source: bought the shop stuff, got disappointed, bought the cylinder, happy.
icwtyjj 47 minutes ago||||
https://www.bocgases.ie/files/balloon_grade_helium_factsheet... says 95% helium and 1% oxygen while https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/helium-gas-purity-what-i... says 97.5% helium but very unlikely for it to be as low as 80%
inaros 17 minutes ago|||
"An overview of the different common grades of helium" - https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of...

Grade 6 (6.0 helium = 99.9999% purity) The closest to 100% pure helium, 6.0 helium is used in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips – Grade 5.5 (5.5 helium = (99.9995% purity) Like 6.0 helium, 5.5 ultra pure helium gas is typically considered “research grade,” also used in chromatography and semiconductor processing

Grade 5 (5.0 helium = 99.999% purity) This high purity grade helium is also widely used for gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and specific laboratory research when higher purity gases are not necessary, as well as for weather balloons and blimps.

Grade 4.8 (4.8 helium = 99.998% purity) The highest of the “industrial grade” heliums, 4.8 grade helium is often used by the military. The rest is classified...

Grade 4.7 (4.7 helium = 99.997% purity) A “Grade-A” industrial helium, 99.997% helium is mostly used in cryogenic applications and for pressurizing and purging

Grade 4.6 (4.6 helium = 99.996% purity) Grade 4.6 industrial helium is used for weather balloons, blimps, in leak detection

Grade 4.5 (4.5 helium = 99.995% purity) Often the grade most commonly referred to when people say “industrial grade,” 99.995% helium is most commonly used in the balloon industry

Grade 4 (4.0 helium and lower = 99.99% purity) Any helium that is 99.99% and down into the high 80 percents is within the range of purities referred to collectively as “balloon grade helium.”

bee_rider 29 minutes ago|||
I wonder if one of you could be going by number of atoms, and the other could be going by weight?
rootusrootus 50 minutes ago||||
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%.
pfdietz 20 minutes ago||
Economically I expect it wouldn't be that pure, since it doesn't have to be that pure to provide lift, and party balloons are not trying to maximize lift.
rootusrootus 12 minutes ago||
Out of curiosity I did a minor amount of research to get an idea.

Turns out that you are right, some balloon gas is 80%. Specifically, the "Balloon Time" tanks you can buy at places like Target say "not less than 80%" helium.

On the other hand, I went to AirGas and a few other suppliers and they seemed to have 95%-97.0% helium gas as their definition for balloon grade.

pfdietz 8 minutes ago||
Perhaps "balloon grade" here is not "party balloon grade". Weather balloons? Research balloons?
bryan0 37 minutes ago||||
source? the value I found is 97.5%+ helium for party balloons: https://www.grecogas.com/learn-our-industry/your-complete-gu...
stevenwoo 18 minutes ago||||
People commit suicide with it because it's supposedly painless and quick.
qwertox 59 minutes ago||||
This is very likely not true.
estimator7292 46 minutes ago||
Would you like to offer a rebuttal more well reasoned and thought out than "nuh-uh"?

You have the entire collected knowledge of mankind at your fingertips. You could do 30 seconds of research and find an answer better than "I don't think that sounds right".

loloquwowndueo 42 minutes ago||
> You could do 30 seconds of research

So could you, right?

shmeeed 4 hours ago|||
[flagged]
dylan604 1 hour ago|||
Depending on who you go to, some places will not sell you tanks of Helium. We did a balloon launch expecting to use Hydrogen because Helium was going to be problematic. The sales rep at the supply place took a look at the group of us knuckleheads with absolutely no Hydrogen experience and ended up selling us the Helium while also exchanging all of our connectors. Hydrogen tanks use specific connectors different from all other tanks to make using a hydrogen take by mistake very difficult. I was nervous about using hydrogen and had no issue with the higher price for the helium knowing I wasn't going to catch on fire.
mc32 12 minutes ago|||
Good old JIT stock management for essential materials, right?

One’d think that they’d keep more than a couple of weeks’s supply of critical materials —to bad many copied Cook’s and others’s JIT inventory management for everything.

dnautics 1 hour ago|||
not just. huge deposits opened (actively being exploited) up in colorado, utah in the past few years and Minnesota this year
fluidcruft 6 hours ago|||
A lot of the balloon use has switched to nitrogen (helium became much, much more expensive after the strategic helium reserve was sold off)
rootusrootus 48 minutes ago|||
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.
ralferoo 1 hour ago||||
> balloon use ... helium became much, much more expensive

More than just from inflation? (sorry, not sorry!)

bilsbie 5 hours ago|||
Is lifting gas? That’s pretty cool.
nerdsniper 5 hours ago|||
Technically yes, but practically no. Air is 78% nitrogen. Nitrogen is 3.3% lighter than air. Helium is 86.2% lighter than air. Hydrogen is 93% lighter than air.
cpncrunch 5 hours ago|||
No.
vasco 6 hours ago|||
Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
bix6 6 hours ago|||
Why did we sell it instead of lease? This seems like something that should be in public hands.
piva00 5 hours ago|||
Ideological idiocy, the dismantling of anything public turning into private hands is ideologically pure for libertarian-inclined folks, no matter how strategically stupid it might be.
forgetfreeman 5 hours ago||||
crypto-libertarian "government bad" ideology is one hell of a drug.
dnautics 5 hours ago||
well it was signed into law by obama, so there's that.
kristjansson 1 hour ago|||
yes the president is the law giver, he who conceives, imposes, and bears in perpetuity all responsibilities for all laws passed during his term
stvltvs 3 hours ago||||
I like the guy, but he was GOP-lite as a president, served corporate interests.
forgetfreeman 2 hours ago|||
I'm no partisan. Politicians elected to serve corporate interests come in your choice of red or blue.
dnautics 2 hours ago||
of course but i think characterizing obama as a Crypto-Libertarian is a disservice to carter, who was actually a crypto-libertarian
cagenut 5 hours ago|||
sorry thats too far left wing an opinion in america today
infogulch 5 hours ago||
The sale was completed in 2024.
actionfromafar 5 hours ago|||
I feel that as soon as the existential threat easened with the splintering of the Soviet Union, the US started doing some self-harming libertarian flavored shit to itself.

In the 1980s, I assume getting rid of the "strategic reserve" of anything would have met more pushback, because of primal fear overriding greed.

scythe 42 seconds ago|||
> We are going to do a terrible thing to you — we are going to deprive you of an enemy.

– Georgi Arbatov, Soviet political scientist, 1988

noah_buddy 7 minutes ago|||
Yes, Reagan was noted for his desire to avoid privatization of anything. /s

Kidding aside, the US has had libertarian pipe dreams for the better part of its history. The aberration was the New Deal period up until the mid 60s.

phr4ts 5 hours ago|||
For those who don't understand, Biden sold the Helium not Trump - he took office on Jan 20, 2025.
baldeagle 5 hours ago|||
"Current law (cira 2013) requires BLM to sell off the crude helium remaining in the Federal Helium Reserve in order to repay the U.S. Treasury the $1.3 billion debt incurred creating it. This debt will be repaid this fiscal year and that, as a consequence, the helium program will terminate at the end of the current fiscal year (October 1, 2013), absent Congressional action. Currently, the Federal Helium Reserve supplies roughly 40% of domestic and 30% of global helium demand. Loss of access to the Federal Helium Reserve would result in significant disruptions to a large number of critical U.S. industries." https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/494b2f9e-c8f5-4...

Sounds like Obama kept the gas taps flowing, instead of locking it up because authorization to sell it had expired. Here is the whole record: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527/...

4ggr0 4 hours ago|||
> too far left wing

> biden

uhm...

edgyquant 27 minutes ago||
His admin was by far the most left wing in history, only the actual far left think otherwise
ImPostingOnHN 19 minutes ago||
Please don't call everyone who doesn't disagree with you, names.

There are billions of people in the world, and you are one, and you have your one set of opinions out of billions.

Nobody endowed you or your opinions with any sort of infallibility or superiority over others.

owebmaster 6 hours ago|||
Foi de vasco (died).
lpcvoid 6 hours ago||
Great timing that the US recently sold its strategic helium supply.
infogulch 5 hours ago||
BLM [(Bureau of Land Management)] completes $460M sale of federal helium reserve to private company | 12/12/2024 | https://www.eenews.net/articles/blm-completes-460m-sale-of-f...

Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM | June 27, 2024 | https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...

baldeagle 5 hours ago|||
BLM was required (to sell it) by Congress in the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013, as the alternative was to not offer any H to the market due to the authorization to sell expiring. Sponsored by a Republican and passed basically unanimously with the proceeds used to pay of the debt (back when we cared about that)
robmccoll 1 hour ago|||
The idea of selling things like our strategic helium supply for $460M to "pay off the debt" would be like me selling bricks from the foundation of my house for a penny to "pay off my mortgage".
embedding-shape 1 hour ago|||
What if it's not actually your house, but some unspecified "somebody else's", and you only stand to profit from it? Starts to make sense why some unscrupulous people would go that way, shitty as it is.
Noumenon72 1 hour ago||||
Wouldn't another alternative be to renew the authorization to sell? This doesn't seem much different from just deciding to sell it.
TehCorwiz 1 hour ago||
Republicans believe that the federal government shouldn't be involved in it at all. So a reauth bill would effectively be DOA.

But yeah, that would make more sense.

dnautics 5 hours ago|||
thanks obama?
actionfromafar 5 hours ago|||
Those party ballons were very cheap for a while.
desireco42 5 hours ago||
yeah that was completely crazy... never understood why they would do something like that
linkregister 5 hours ago||
An explanation is particular political group was ideologically enthralled with privatization.
karmakurtisaani 3 hours ago||
The same group will later happily blame the government for doing said stupid thing.
etchalon 54 minutes ago||
It's almost like war is a bad thing.
emsign 5 hours ago||
Iran will make AI go pop.
BigTTYGothGF 1 hour ago||
We can only hope.
heyitsmedotjayb 5 hours ago||
inshallah
4ggr0 4 hours ago|||
let's see if it turns into mashallah :)
nDRDY 3 hours ago||
Somewhat tangential question - for the "Just Stop Oil" folks - is it the extraction of oil that is the problem, or the burning of it? If the former, then we have an opportunity to investigate more renewable sources.
tencentshill 3 hours ago|||
The goal is to keep the oil in the ground, to not be burned or to be made into plastics.
dylan604 1 hour ago||
Isn't the main source of helium from oil production? It's not like we have fusion reactors turning H into He.
ac29 1 hour ago||
The main source of helium is natural gas production, not oil
dylan604 50 minutes ago||
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.
killerstorm 1 hour ago||
[flagged]
spiderfarmer 5 hours ago|
Lindsay Graham has an easy solution to this unnecessary conflict: send your sons and daughters.

This whole administration is such a fiasco.

hinkley 1 hour ago|
Lindsey Graham is a lying sack of shit.

And I say that with his permission, since he’s on camera asking to be called out if he did exactly what they did with the Supreme Court not four years later.

pelotron 47 minutes ago||
Thank deities someone else remembers this.
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