With a shortage of liquid helium, MRIs would not be able to operate, the authors write. | REUTERS America's looming helium disaster

Imagine that you sustain an injury, sending you to the hospital. The doctor orders an MRI. But the critical material that allows the MRI to operate — liquid helium — is not available. So you don’t receive your MRI and a proper diagnosis cannot be made. If Congress does not act on bipartisan legislation by Sept. 30, such a scenario is a very real possibility in the near future.

On that date, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will conclude its activities mandated by the Helium Privatization Act of 1996 governing sales of helium from the reserve it operates outside Amarillo, Texas. And as its authority to provide more than 50 percent of domestic helium ends, it will have to turn off its taps. The combination of those actions would create havoc in the U.S. and global helium markets.


To avert the looming helium disaster, the House unanimously passed the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act on April 26. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee marked up similar legislation Tuesday, but room on the Senate floor calendar will remain at a premium for the rest of the current legislative session.

Like its House counterpart, the Senate bill, the Helium Stewardship Act (S. 783), seeks to remedy long-standing helium supply shortages, stabilize price fluctuations and provide more of the supply of crude helium to the market. It also would phase out the federal role in the helium business by beginning an auction process to sell down most of the remaining reserve. Most important, the bill would address future helium supply through a research and development provision that could lead to more effective helium capture from U.S. natural gas wells.

If Sept. 30 arrives without a new bill, the loss of BLM helium could cost jobs and hurt the U.S. economy. Companies such as GE Healthcare and Siemens might have to shut down or delay production of new MRI machines and stop servicing existing machines at hospitals and diagnostic centers. High-tech manufacturers such as Texas Instruments and Idaho-based Micron might not be able to fabricate the semiconductors used in a broad range of key technologies.

Even worse, without a structured government phaseout, the bureau’s authority to sell helium would vanish overnight, placing at risk groundbreaking research at universities and national labs aimed at developing the next generation of MRI and semiconductor technologies. Large research centers such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, which rely on liquid helium to operate, could be threatened, and university researchers could also be forced to terminate their work.

The scientific community uses only 2 percent to 3 percent of the liquid helium sold in the global market. But the nature of cryogenic experiments makes them particularly vulnerable to any interruption in the supply of helium. For example, if a shipment of liquid helium is late by more than a few days, an experimental apparatus will be warmed up prematurely, wasting weeks or even months of valuable and expensive work.

Such costly interruptions in supply are not simply conjecture. They actually occurred in 2006 and 2007, as well as last summer, affecting more than 40 universities and national laboratories.

Helium must not be held hostage to congressional gridlock. There is too much at stake. The bipartisan, noncontroversial Helium Stewardship Act would enable medical patients to continue receiving MRIs, keep thousands of Americans employed, allow American high-tech products to continue to flow into the global economy and permit university laboratories to continue to produce cutting-edge results.

But Congress must act by Sept. 30. Otherwise, American science and technology will suffer irreparable damage, and someone in need of an MRI on Oct. 1 will be turned away, simply because the helium taps have been shut off. It’s a no-brainer. Congress should move forward swiftly and pass the Helium Stewardship Act.

Michael S. Turner is a theoretical cosmologist and the Bruce V. and Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor and Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago.

Moses Chan is the Evan Pugh Professor of Physics at Penn State University.