Helium, used in nuclear, medical and, yes, party industries, has become scarce, but new research has revealed a possible way to pinpoint fresh sources

A few years ago, we were warned that the world’s helium reserves were running out. Today, researchers announced there may be several potential new sources of the precious gas hidden throughout the world.

Helium, which is used widely in nuclear, medical and party industries, has become worryingly scarce. Despite it being the second most abundant element in the universe, here on Earth it’s rare - it is so light that it leaks away into space – and our major resources are running low.



Practically all of the world’s helium reserves have been derived as a by-product from the extraction of natural gas from underground gas traps. “No-one could really pinpont where the next deposit would appear,” said Diveena Danabalan, a PhD student at the University of Durham. This has made it difficult to locate new sources of helium.



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To make the quest a little easier, Danabalan and her colleagues have identified how helium makes its way into gas traps. They analysed natural gas samples from 22 wells throughout the US and Canada and discovered that wherever helium was present, there was also a second chemical that is only ever associated with ground-water.



Danabalan said: “This, we realised, meant that helium has to have been dissolved in groundwater and then transported throughout the US and Canada until it met a geological structure that drew it back out of the water and into an underground trap.” Danabalan presented the findings today at the Goldschmidt conference in Prague.



Since known helium traps appear in regions such as the Rocky Mountains that were formed from ancient tectonic movements, the team reckon it may have been these climactic events occurring 135 million years ago that released helium into the groundwater in the first place.



Since these tectonic events happened all over the planet, it means there is potentially several traps full of commercial quantities of helium throughout the world, said Danabalan’s colleague Christopher Ballentine of the University of Oxford.



The problem is finding them. “We need to study maps that have been made for that period that infer groundwater direction, which will hopefully allow us pinpoint geological regions that might contain helium traps,” said Danabalan.



The research looks interesting and is well done, said Jacob Lowenstern, a geologist at the US Geological Survey. “It shows that the accumulation of helium may occur in more geological settings than previously recognised.”





