Assessing the Past and Future Sustainability of Global Helium Resources, Extraction, Supply and Use, Using the Integrate
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Assessing the Past and Future Sustainability of Global Helium Resources, Extraction, Supply and Use, Using the Integrated Assessment Model WORLD7 Anna Hulda Olafsdottir1 · Harald Ulrik Sverdrup2 Received: 15 January 2020 / Revised: 30 March 2020 / Accepted: 15 April 2020 / Published online: 19 May 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The sustainability of the helium production, supply and use was assessed using the WORLD7 integrated model. The use of helium is at present concluded to be unsustainable with respect to long-term supply security, because of lack of significant recycling. There is no risk for significant helium scarcity in the short term (before 2030), but in the long term, the scarcity risk is unavoidable under business as usual. The helium supply runs into limitations by 2090, under business as usual and supply declines after that. The study shows that the present helium recycling rate is far too low, causing helium to be squandered in one-way use and that is driving helium prices up. A scenario analysis with the WORLD7 model suggests that a sustained program for helium recycling and demand management, combined with political efforts to ban unnecessary use, will be able to significantly improve the long-term helium supply situation. The outputs show that such efforts may be sufficient for avoiding any scarcity under the demand assumptions taken. Keywords Helium · System dynamics · Modelling · Global modelling · WORLD7 · Resources
Introduction Helium is a non-renewable resource of great importance to science and modern medicine and advanced physics research. It is essential for achieving the extremely cold temperatures required by many current and emerging technologies as well as for advanced scientific research (APS 1995) (see Table 1 for a list of main uses). The demand for helium has been steadily increasing, and likely that will continue. The biggest consumer of helium is NASA, followed by the USA Department of Defense, which uses a significant quantity to cool liquid hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel (Scholes 2012).
* Harald Ulrik Sverdrup [email protected] Anna Hulda Olafsdottir [email protected] 1
Industrial Engineering, University of Iceland, Hjarðarhagi 2‑6, 107 Reykjavik, Iceland
Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, 2311 Hamar, Norway
2
Helium is made on earth via nuclear decay of uranium, and recovered from mines. It boils at just 4 K, and during normal lab operations much inevitably evaporates. Once it is released into the atmosphere, it becomes uneconomical to recapture it, and since it is so light, atmospheric helium will eventually escape earth altogether. Continuing on the current path (business as usual, BAU), a shortage of helium is therefore bound to happen in the near future, the big question is when will we run into hard scarcity and what can we do to manage the situation? Currently humanity is squandering this strategically important resource and nearly no significant recycling helium occurs (Bardi 2013; R. Heinberg 2001; R. Heinberg 20
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