A hefty sci/tech body has said that the USA’s current policy of selling off its enormous reserves of helium gas – which it keeps stored in a gigantic subterranean dome reservoir in Texas – is all wrong. This is partly because the plan is inflating the global helium market, and partly because helium is vital for many activities dear to the hearts of TechNudge readers.
Specifically, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) says, helium is of course vital for airships and blimps – unless you want to go for hydrogen, generally seen as rather too prone to exploding. Helium is also vital as a coolant in the field of superconducting magnets, and thus very important to enormous particle-smasher facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider and their exciting attendant possibilities of dimensional portal invasion or planetary soupening mishap.
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