All That Matters

Planning electrical grids in a steady environment is not overly difficult. A number of large power stations are connected to urban population centres, where much of the power is consumed. Typically, such power grids would look like meshes with  interconnected distribution points that make sure that if one power station fails, others can compensate .

However, as electrical demand grows, the solution is that new power plants are built and linked to the net at various places, but often with only one connection to the network. These dead ends make the network very susceptible to blackouts, even if many of them are connected by two parallel power lines for redundancy.

In future, the use of renewable energy will pose even greater demands on such network architectures, because the distributed generation of power makes the power generation very dynamic. If the sun shines in certain parts of a country, or the wind blows strongly in one area, large amounts of power will need to be shifted between regions, and the power grids need to be capable of handling that. […]

Whenever I meet researchers working in low-temperature physics, the worry are helium prices. When I did my PhD a long time ago, I was able to buy 100 litre dewars of liquid helium without thinking too much about its price.

Since then, times have changed a lot, and prices have multiplied over the past years. The reason is that helium is a scarce commodity. In the atmosphere, helium is impossible to catch and most of it comes from underground, created by the radioactive decay of heavy elements. The United States have a large stockpile underground in Texas, which when depleted will mean the end of most usable helium sources.

To combat the rising prices, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society and the US Defense Department’s procurement agency are now planning to bundle their forces and to buy helium for researchers at volume discounts. Nothing wrong with that, this is certainly a good idea that will make it easier for US researchers to do cryogenic experiments.

Regardless, we should not forget that helium is not a renewable resource. One group of scientists using more of it at a cheaper price ultimately means shortages elsewhere. Whether it is for science and researchers elsewhere on the globe, for medical NMR equipment, or in other areas. This is where we still need to work on. Either through improved cryostats in research, or by avoiding unnecessary uses of helium, such as in helium party balloons, which incredibly are still being sold to be released into the atmosphere for nothing.