SENATE BILL: Helium Exploration Act (Law'd)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor: Tmthforu94 for Fmr. Senator TJ and Assemblyman Siren.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The sposnor has 24 hours to begin advocating for this.

[tmthforu94]

A GM analysis estimated that clause one would cost approximately $100 million.

[TNF]

Why not just nationalize this activity and allow for the people to fully benefit from it?

[President Tyrion]

Is there a reason for Clause 3? Archer taught me that helium isn't flammable (supposedly). Not that I'm saying flammability is the only reason to ban something, for the record.

[Anna Komnene]

Hello Senators!

The reason I originally came up with this bill along with Senator TJ was in order to create a solution for the impending national helium shortage (IRL).  Helium is a rare, depleting, and, non-renewable resource.  It's used most importantly to operate MRI technology in hospitals.  Two of the major problems are one, that helium's prices are artificially low because people like to have cheap floating balloons for birthday parties - and two, that those artificially low prices along with the resulting shortage lead to rising hospital costs and diminishing incentive for energy exploration companies to mine for helium on it's own.  Most of the time, helium is extracted while drilling for natural gas, but if we are to have enough of it going forward, we really need companies that specifically target helium.

Clause 3 is meant to help combat the balloon demand problem by reducing the amount of helium used for them.  Talking with TJ about it, he said that a pure helium mix isn't actually necessary for the balloons to float.  Mixing helium with a gas like neon would achieve the same result (TJ could probably explain this better than I can).  Considering that we really need helium for more important activities like medical procedures and welding, I think we can afford to limit it's usage for floating party balloons.

Clause 1 is meant to help solve the demand problem by providing the incentive to mine for the gas on it's own.  In addition, it makes it more likely that we can continue to benefit from helium  within Atlasia instead of becoming dependent on reserves in places like Qatar and Algeria.

And I think Clause 2 is self explanatory, providing funds for research into improvements in helium extraction technology.

[TNF]

I'd really like to know the rationale for not just allowing the federal government to do this directly. We could save a lot of money in cutting out the middle man.

[Anna Komnene]

Well I'm not sure it's even possible to nationalize helium because it's current extraction methods are integrated into natural gas infrastructure.

Even if it was, the government's involvement in helium, as I understand it, is part of the reason we're even having this issue in the first place.  The US has a national helium reserve, and the government has been selling those reserves at below market rates for decades while not doing enough to restock the supply on it's own.  Why?  I don't know - maybe the government just isn't that interested in helium.  Contrary to popular belief, the public sector is subject to supply and demand too - it just works a bit differently.

I think it'd be much better to help create an incentive for people to mine helium on their own.  That way we are more likely to increase the supply of helium - which has been the problem all along.  It's not like this bill prevents the public sector from being involved in helium.

[TJ in Oregon]

As Assemblywoman Siren has described, we have allowed for several years a mismanagement of our resource with regards to Helium. As it is crucial to numerous applications from welding to MRI machines, we will need to be more careful in the future about Helium usage. Unlike other chemicals considered "non-renewable", like gasoline, Helium cannot be made by chemical means at all. Helium is the closest substance to being perfectly inert in existence. The only way we can make Helium is by nuclear fusion, which doesn't seem like it's about to become a feasible technology for Helium production any time soon.

The purpose of clause 3 was not because Helium is dangerous (it isn't; it's inert under virtually any conceivable circumstances), but to persuade balloon customers to use less pure Helium. One of the main difficulties in Helium extraction is its purification from Neon and it is unnecessary to use pure Helium to make balloons float. In fact, you could use pure Helium, pure Neon, or anywhere in between. Balloons will float if they are filled with any gas less dense than air. While Helium is the least dense gas other than Hydrogen (which we should avoid), a number of other gasses are also less dense. Most of the other gasses are unsafe for children to handle for one reason or another (Hydrogen Cyanide, Hydrogen Fluoride, etc) or rarer than Helium anyway (like Neon) but there is no reason at all that requires the use of pure Helium. The way this is written is actually quite a loose restriction. We could probably go quite a bit lower than 75% without running into issues. (I would say anything lower than about 25% would be problematic because they wouldn't be able to cut the mixture with air and still have it be considerably lighter than air anymore).

Methane (Natural Gas) and Ammonia are occasionally used for weather balloons. Another possibility for how we could address this is limit weather balloon Helium usage as well.

As for nationalizing extraction, doing this would require the federal government to arbitrarily purchase billions of dollars of production equipment to do the same thing the industry is doing now.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If there are no desired amendments, this can be brought to a final vote in a few hours.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Senators, a final vote is now open on the underlying legislation, please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.

[PPT Spiral]

Aye

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

AYE

[bore]

Aye

[Maxwell]

Aye

[President Tyrion]

Aye

[Gass3268]

Aye

[tmthforu94]

Aye

[TNF]

Aye

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Vote on Final Passage of the Helium Exploration Act:

Aye (: bore, Gass3268, Maxwell, NC Yankee, Spiral, Tmthforu94, TNF and TyriontheImperialist
Nay (0):
Abstain (0):

Didn't Vote (2): Napoleon and Xahar

With eight votes in the affirmative and none in the negative, the bill has been passed and is presented to the President for executive action.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor: Tmthforu94 for Fmr. Senator TJ and Assemblyman Siren.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

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Sponsor: Tmthforu94 for Fmr. Senator TJ and Assemblyman Siren.

x Duke