Comment by dust42
11 hours ago
Just to mention one thing, helium -which is a necessity for chip production- is a byproduct of LNG production. And 20% of that is just gone (Qatar) and the question is how long it will take to get that back. So not only a chip shortage because of AI buying chips in huge volumes but also because production will be hampered.
Tongue in cheek: we urgently need fusion power plants. For the AI and the helium.
> Tongue in cheek: we urgently need fusion power plants. For the AI and the helium.
Whenever I read about fusion, I get reminded of a note in the sci-fi book trilogy The Night's Dawn. In that story, the introduction of cheap fusion energy had not cured global warming on Earth but instead sped it up with all the excess heat from energy-wasting devices.
What matters is not what we don't have, but how we manage that which we do have.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
Fusion fuel is so energy dense that fusion plants will never produce industrially meaningful amounts of helium.
Well, as long as they can make electricity too cheap to meter, we can get helium from somewhere. Mine it from LNG sources currently untapped due to EROI < 1, or ship it from the goddamn Moon - ultimately, every problem in life (except that of human heart) can be solved with cheap energy.
The mere existence of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies means that it is impossible to ever have electricity that is "too cheap to meter". Any time electricity prices would fall below the price of mining, that creates a market opportunity that will be filled by more mining. Wasted electricity is the product.
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With the trend of orbital launches becoming cheaper, it might be that mining helium off-Tera will be our long term supply. Especially if the alternative is adjusting the amount of protons in an atom.
There are several challenges, not least of which is storage. We have considerable leakage in most of our current helium storage solutions on earth because it’s so light. Our national reserves are literally in underground caverns because it’s better than anything we can build. Space just means any containment system will need to work in a wider range of pressure/temperatures.
There is to my knowledge no reason to assume that complicated physics experiments that heat water to run a steam engine will be much cheaper than fission power plants, unfortunately.
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Fusion power that uses steam turbines to convert heat into electricity will be more expensive than solar/wind
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I think this is why he labelled the comment 'Tongue in cheek'. Thanks for pointing it out explicitly tho, was not aware of this.
Can't they irradiate tanks of H2 or something with so much neutrons and electrons until morale improves and they become He? Or would that make radioactive He?
Helium is 5 parts per million of the atmosphere. It should be possible to extract it, and thus never run out.
Doing some googling yields an estimated cost of about $25,000 per kg. I can see why extraction from wells is preferred.
Considering my helium-filled hard drives a strategic reserve now
Gonna sit on my half-empty tank for party balloons from my daughter's birthday, maybe we'll be able to sell it to pay off mortgage quicker than the helium itself escapes the tank.
Same energy as "buy bitcoin" in 2011
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That's another lifetime-limited thing -- the helium leaks out, and you cannot (for practical purposes) stop it or even meaningfully slow it down. When it's gone, the drives are dead. And the helium leaks by calendar-days, it doesn't matter whether the drive is powered on or off.
Non-helium hard drives are basically limited by their bearing spin hours. If one only spins a few hours a week, it'll probably run for decades. Not so with helium.
You just have to put your hard drive in a pressure vessel filled with helium.
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