MRI machines need thousands of liters of liquid helium to function. Health care workers say they can’t afford any disruptions to the helium supply chain.
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.
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.
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.
There’s quite a large amount of the usage which could be labelled “for fun”.