Odd Lots Now There's a Helium Shortage and It Affects More Than Balloons
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Mar 27, 2026 
Nicholas Snyder, founder and CEO of North American Helium, joins for a tour of the strange, fragile helium market. They get into why chipmaking, MRIs, rockets, and fiber optics rely on it. They explore how helium forms over geologic time, why shipping and storage are so tricky, and how reserve selloffs and a Qatar disruption helped tighten supply.
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Why Helium Is Irreplaceable In High Tech
- Helium matters industrially because it combines extreme cold, inertness, tiny molecular size, and high heat transfer in one element.
- Nicholas Snyder links that mix to MRIs, rockets, leak detection, and chipmaking, where leading-edge lithography may use 10 times more helium per chip.
Why Helium Deposits Are So Rare
- Helium forms from radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, then escapes unless geology traps it for hundreds of millions of years.
- Commercial deposits need the right rocks, nearby uranium or thorium, and low tectonic activity; mountains often signal leaks rather than protection.
How The Helium Reserve Distorted The Market
- The US strategic helium reserve preserved helium that otherwise would have been vented, but fixed-price selloffs crushed incentives for new exploration.
- Nicholas Snyder says Congress framed it as "$1.4 billion of party balloon debt," even though physicists warned helium would grow more important for science and industry.