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Comment by marcosdumay | Hacker News Reader

The US government decided (maybe correctly, IDK) some years ago that their strategic helium reserves were too high (and thus expensive).

There were several announcements, a lot of discussion, and a long process before they started selling it. It was also a temporary action, with a well known end-date (that TBH, I never looked at). It had a known and constant small pressure over investments, it wasn't something that destabilized a market.

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Isn't it like underground? Why would it be expensive?

It wasn't. It was injected into the porous rock at the Bush Dome Reservoir [1], which acted as a natural container of helium. The strategic helium reserve was "expensive" because buying helium for storage was funded by treasury debt, but it was expensive purely only on paper.

[1] https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/bush-dome-reserv...

The Bush Dome Reservoir is a giant underground formation. So yes, it's being stored underground.

I was replying to the last question: "Why would it be expensive?"

The question wasn’t why filling it would be expensive, but why maintaining it once stored would be considered expensive.

I answered that. It wasn't expensive. Building up the stockpile was expensive (but only on paper; financed via treasury debt), but once stored, it required very little maintenance because it was all held underground in porous rock. The only real expense was maintaining the wells.

It was a penny wise and pound foolish political move to pretend to be financially responsible and reduce the deficit by some tiny rounding error on top of a rounding error amount.

Basically political bike shedding so elected officials could avoid making any hard or controversial decisions that would have a material impact but maybe upset some folks due to raising taxes or reducing spending.

I suppose I'm neutral on the topic of strategic helium reserves; but what aspect of this is supposed to be pound foolish? What exactly is the buffer meant to be for?

A strategic petroleum reserve makes a lot of sense, petroleum is part of the food supply chain and it'd be stupid to be in a position where a short disruption could cause people to starve. Not to mention the military implications if an army can't zoom around because the petrol stations run dry for whatever reason.

I don't see anything on the list of uses for helium that looks particularly time- and helium- sensitive in the way that a strategic stockpile would help with.

The article for example mentions MRI macines, aerospace engineering, fiber optics and semiconductors, so I guess it depends on if you want those things to still be available in a crisis

That does sound kinda minor? A worst-case scenario of a month or two without MRI machines or "aerospace engineering", whatever that means doesn't sound particularly scary. And that is making some pretty unrealistic assumptions like there is literally no helium, hospitals don't have private reserves that can last a few months and there are no replacement gasses or alternative options of any sort. And people can make do with limited fibre-optic or semiconductor manufacturing. We have crisises in various computer components every few years (I can think of HDD, RAM & GPU supply shocks over the last few years). Doesn't seem to be a major problem. A couple of months of disruption isn't a strategically interesting event.

It all depends on what you care about. People dying waiting for an MRI doesn't end society as we know it, but someone will probably be sad about it

If you're worried you can keep your own helium reserve? Then if there is an emergency and it turns out that you don't need an MRI you can sell the helium to whoever does and feel really good about your foresight.

I'm not seeing any need for a strategic reserve here. There aren't any strategic issues. It is a bit far-fetched that a helium shock will even lead to the end of MRIs.

Everyone also could keep their own supply of gas and their own batteries for electricity but it turns out that is not expensive and foolish compared to centralizing such backups.

A month or two without an MRI is a lot of dead people.

A lot of people die every month. We're talking about a probability near-0 event where I imagine it'd be difficult to pick that deaths out from general background mortality - admittedly just based on the fact I don't recall anyone I know who needed a life-saving MRI but I know a few who died. That isn't much of a justification for a strategic helium reserve. Some level of risk just has to be tolerated, we can't afford to have a contingency for every possible hypothetical.

AFAIK, it was created to fill airships in case of a war. So the original intent is completely outdated.

Also, last I knew about it, the reserves were only reduced, and the US still has some. I have absolutely no idea on the cost/benefit of it, but I don't think any other country keeps a large reserve of Helium.

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