Helium prices ...

[Wookie]

It is a product of radioactive decay of uranium and thorium and found in natural gas deposits. It is separated from methane (natural gas) cryogenically. There is no such thing as "radioactive" or "free radical" helium atoms that have to be filtered out and there is no filter that could do that anyway.

Radioactive Helium is an alpha particle. Bad stuff if taken internally.

 

[rjack321]

Radioactive Helium is an alpha particle. Bad stuff if taken internally.

yes, but there are no free alpha particles whizzing around in Texas or Wyoming natural gas fields waiting to get slurped up and separated for divers (or anyone else)

https://www.nap.edu/read/9860/chapter/7

 

[Wookie]

yes, but there are no free alpha particles whizzing around in Texas or Wyoming natural gas fields waiting to get slurped up and separated for divers (or anyone else)

https://www.nap.edu/read/9860/chapter/7

Nope, agreed. There are a few in Idaho, however, at the INL. They make them there.

 

[Wookie]

yes, but there are no free alpha particles whizzing around in Texas or Wyoming natural gas fields waiting to get slurped up and separated for divers (or anyone else)

https://www.nap.edu/read/9860/chapter/7

Nope, agreed. There are a few in Idaho, however, at the INL. They make them there.

 

[Seaross]

silly me,still too expensive ,call to arms boycott balloons, deserving deep water naturalist need your inert gases, maybe they can start sending weather rockets up instead of ballons

 

[Miyaru]

I managed to get He again, although my account is restricted to maximum 3 tanks (50 liters/200bar) in 2020.
Price went up from 1.2 eurocents per liter to almost 2 eurocents.
According to the gas company, prices will go down again this year.

 

[stuartv]

$1.00 a foot here. No problem yet in getting it. I think the shop I use gets it in such limited amounts that the supplier can always spare it and doesn’t even feel the pinch of supplying it to them that cheaply (cause they are still making money on it at $1).

 

[Graeme Fraser]

Still able to get helium at the equivalent of $0.80 per cubic foot here (£0.02 per litre). However that is a self fill staff rate, not retail.

 

[Dominik_E]

"Balloon gas" (it is really sold under that name in some places) as far as I know sometimes has quite a lot of air (or nitrogen) in it. Normally about 5% non-helium content, but varies here. Thus it is cheaper than industrial helium, but not really an alternative for diving obviously.

 

[BlueTrin]

The NDAC in Wales sells 3.9 pence per ltr of helium