Senate passes bill to avert helium shortage

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Senate passes bill to avert helium shortage

AP foreign, Friday September 20 2013

MATTHEW DALY

Associated Press= WASHINGTON (AP) - Break out the balloons.

Congress moved a step closer Thursday to averting an impending shutdown of the federal helium reserve, a key supplier of the lighter-than-air gas used in a products ranging from party balloons to MRI machines.

The Federal Helium Program, which provides about 42 percent of the nation's helium from a storage site near Amarillo, Texas, is set to shut down Oct. 7 unless lawmakers intervene. The shutdown is a result of a 1996 law requiring the reserve to pay off a $1.3 billion debt by selling its helium.

The debt is paid, but billions of cubic feet of helium remain. Closing the reserve would cause a worldwide helium shortage - an outcome lawmakers from both parties hope to avoid.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/feedarticle/10982401

[pangaia]

1. I thought this might be something from The Onion.

Guess I never stopped to consider.. "Where does helium come from?"

[Igel]

2. Oops. Had this backwards.

There's going to be a helium shortage if we don't stop using it frivolously.

I was hoping that the Senate had addressed this and put in place some mechanism to safeguard existing supplies.

Instead, it sounds like they're safeguarding the frivolity of the way most He is used.