How is Helium made?

Question

There is a national wide helium (H) shortage. I was wondering how this is made. Is it a gas.

Answer 1

As other answerers have noted, helium is an inert gas, and its main source is from certain natural gas wells (as noted in the excellent reference in Nasuko's answer).

Helium cannot be 'made'; except for the very limited production of helium in a hydrogen fusion bomb, or in a fusion nuclear reactor (if one is ever made on a commercial scale).

Helium is 'made' in the first instance, from the natural radioactive decay of radiactive elememts (Uranium, Thorium, Radium, etc) in the earth's crust; which explains why it is found underground.

There is insufficient helium present in the atmosphere to make it worthwhile recovering (but the related inert gas Argon is present in the atmosphere in sufficient quantity to enable it to be recovered by liquefying air).

There is an interesting 'fact' about the absence of helium in the atmosphere:
Some religious fundamentalists, in attempting to 'prove' that the earth is only 6000 years old (and the massive evidence otherwise of science is wrong), point to the absence of helium; which should be present in much larger quantities, if radioactive decay had been going on in the earth for billions of years. The absence can be explained by the simple fact that most of the helium is still underground; a fact overlooked by the fundamentalist argument.

Answer 2

How Is Helium Made

Answer 3

It is separated from natural gas from certain wells. The government plant that produces most of it in Texas is down.

Answer 4

Click here below to read it.... Helium is an IDEAL GAS.