Researchers find game-changing helium reserve in Tanzania

Meanwhile, quantum mechanics research has examined two of the fluid phases of helium-4 to understand things like superconductivity, while some telescopes use the gas to fill the spaces between lenses because of its low index of refraction.

According to the US federal Bureau of Land Management, helium prices have tripled over the past decade, and the reserve is expected to be depleted by 2020.

Researchers in the United Kingdom and Norway tested out a new approach to gas exploration and struck exactly what they were looking for: a huge helium gas field.

According to Chris Ballentine from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, there is an estimated 54 billion cubic feet of helium in just one section of the Rift Valley that is enough to provide for more than 1.2 million MRI scanners.

The discovery of the helium cache could ease the current shortage of the valuable, rare gas – both because of the astounding amount of helium found and the potential for these discovery methods to be applied elsewhere around the world.

Their research showed that volcanic activity provides the intense heat necessary to release the gas from ancient, helium-bearing rocks.

But now a new, huge helium reserve has been found in the Tanzanian East African Rift Valley, announced researchers at Oxford and Durham universities in the United Kingdom, working with the Norway-based exploration company Helium One, at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Yokohama, Japan, today. That’s more than twice what’s now held in the United States Federal Helium Reserve.

“This is around the size of 600,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools with helium gas”, said Ballentine. “It’s a very significant problem for society in that helium usage has become more and more important in high-tech industry and also medical use”.

The reserve was found by researchers from the universities of Oxford and Durham, who worked alongside the Norwegian-based exploration company, One Helium.

The shortage was so severe that the BBC ran a story in 2013 where some scientists were asking if “wasting” helium on party balloons was a prudent decision. The helium reserves we do have are mostly the result of uranium and other heavy elements undergoing radioactive decay, producing helium atoms in the process. Helium atoms are so small that the gas leaks out of nearly every sort of container, and once helium escapes into the atmosphere, it’s gone for good, he explained. In 2015, the British Medical Association expressed concern that helium supplies may have to be regulated.

“In a freaky sort of way, it is the ultimate nonrenewable element, and at the moment, it is not replaceable for many applications, certainly for medical systems such as MRI scanners”, Gluyas said.

The team sent postdoctoral researcher Pete Barry of the University of Oxford to collect samples from the area, which Ph.D candidate Diveena Danabalan, of Durham University, later analyzed.