Critical for AI
It's critical for lithography, the process that makes all of the magical chips that make the modern world function.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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At least some positive news! Fuck AI
If you read the article, it isn't about AI.
It's used to cool lithography machines which produce all CPUs, GPUs, RAM, etc. The entire world of electronics is built on the output of these lithography machines.
The headline may as well say "Iran War Chokes Off Helium Supply Critical for Skibidi Toilet memes" Helium isn't used in AI datacenters, it has nothing to do with AI outside of the fact that every processor is made using lithography.
So it's going to be rerouted from the MRIs I take it…
AI comes first alphabetically. Sorry!
Let's fucking go! I'm so rooting for Iran.
Can I remind everyone that it is impossible to produce helium in a practical way?
It is literally only produced through a fusion reaction, and that happens in stars and in incredibly tiny quantities in fusion reactors.
Whenever it's released, it basically just floats away into space and is lost forever.
It’s also produced (slowly) through radioactive decay underground where it becomes trapped with other gasses. That’s the reserve we’ve been working with.
The one we can mine is drawn off together with natural gas, and was produced over geological timescales as product of alpha decay of uranium
Can I remind everyone that it is impossible to produce helium in a practical way?
Sun has been doing it for millions of years and it's a big dumb ball of energy.
Is it practical? No. Is it producing any Helium right now? No. Is it probably just a big investor scam? Sure. But still more practical than trying to conquer Iran.
That doesn't actually sound like they intend on producing usable helium though. That sounds like they intend on doing a really difficult and expensive fusion reaction to produce helium 3, which they will then use in a cheaper and easier to do fusion reaction, and the end result of all of that should be electricity and no net new helium since it's expensive and rare AF and they need it all to make the whole process remotely plausibly profitable.
Unfortunately it's also critical for MRIs.
Yeah, what a crazy headline that AI was the thing mentioned and not 1 of the many other real life uses that offer greater solutions to us.
Because clickbaiting the 'AI bad' people is worth more advertising money than actually examining the effects of a helium shortage.
I need more happy birthday balloons.
i wanna do a silly voice
If only I could believe that's because MRIs are more important so their supply isn't in jeopardy.
And making your voice sound funny
Sulfur hexafluoride does the opposite:
IIRC it's also one of the worst greenhouse gasses in existence, unfortunately.
Edit: the worst greenhouse gas. Why are cool things always secretly terrible?
Can you stand upside down to get dense gasses out of your lungs? Asking for a friend
I assume so. Here's a video of someone floating a boat (apparently in air) in it, and then sinking it by pouring cups of sulfur hexafluoride over it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee2NaYRnRGo
If it avoids diffusing into air to the degree that you can scoop it up and pour it, I'd imagine that it'd pour out of one's lungs the same way.
But if you just want to get most of it out of your lungs
like, you've been breathing it and don't want to asphyxiate
I imagine that exhaling all the air you can and inhaling air and doing that a few times would probably do a pretty good job, the way the Mythbusters video above did with the helium.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and by the time the helium supply is restored, we've done away with the shitty not-really-AI craze, saving more helium for things of use to humanity.
Maybe this is why they're now ramping up going back to the moon? Gonna start fuckin the moon up for all that sweet Helium 3.
We could be at war with Iran for a century, sending strike teams in to siphon helium out of the ground and smuggle it back to the US in stealth jets and submarines, and it would still be significantly cheaper than trying to mine the moon.
I sure hope not. I saw how that went in the Time Machine remake!
They were blasting to build luxury condos iirc
Okay, but do you really think we're going to prioritize the enormous loss-leading CSAM engines over lifesaving medical diagnostics machines?
I trust our leaders to make the right decisions. Just a small bump in the road or two lately, that's all.
Thanks for reminding me of the date
Oh, I'll be damned. Didn't even dawn on me.
My understanding is that MRIs don't consume helium, in the same way air conditioning units don't consume refrigerant, so helium is only needed for making new MRI machines.
New ones, and not all if them, work this way, as in there's tiny helium condensing unit. Older ones just let it go and require topping up every couple months (guessing by how often helium in NMR is topped up). Also every emergency shutdown invariably blows off all of helium inside
Also used in MRI machines and semiconductor manufacturing. Probably some other important stuff as well.
I'd guess that most industrial users of helium don't consume it and could theoretically recover it from whatever process it's involved in rather than just releasing it.
EDIT: Hard drives being an exception, as apparently some ship helium-filled; there, it's actually being consumed during the manufacture.
EDIT2: I'd also point out that in the long run, we probably do have to be more conservative with our helium supply. We get it from pockets in the earth. It's actually not all that common; it just happens, though, that we go to a lot of effort to extract natural gas, and that happens to sometimes also come up with helium, so we get that supply. But because it's not reactive, it doesn't bond to anything
it stays in gas form. When we let it go, it heads to near the top of our atmosphere and eventually gets lost to solar wind. Many users who today just release it
because why not, as the natural gas people will be providing more, and it's cheaper that way
probably will need to capture what they're using if we want helium to continue to be available.
The problem is that helium is notoriously hard to contain. It's transported and stored super-cooled, but it still gases off, and to release pressure they just have to release it into the atmosphere. It effectively has a shelf life and so it has to be constantly replenished.
It's not just AI, it's integrated electronics in general.
Big tech's support of this dipshit finally biting themselves in the ass