The helium crisis – the CNRS is breathing more new life into science

Helium is of course a delight for children who love chasing birthday balloons but this is also the case for scientists who use it in a wide variety of research fields. Helium is a chemical element with two electrons and an inert gas that does not take part in chemical reactions under normal temperature and pressure conditions. Its temperature can be brought down to 1 Kelvin / -272° Celsius or even lower in some laboratories and it is used at very low temperatures to cool superconducting magnets in hospital MRI or laboratory NMR equipment, spacecraft thrusters and magnetic systems.

And yet, terrestrial resources of this gas – which is considered 'rare' because of its chemical properties1  – are dwindling. Exponential price inflation (from €5 per litre in 2018 to €35 in 2023) has meant helium is becoming less and less accessible for research laboratories with purchases of helium now costing the CNRS up to €2 million a year.

A doubly rare gas

This inflation derives more from the highly geopolitical nature of helium resources rather than its scarcity. Currently, the estimations of helium stocks suggest it will go on being used for another 150 years at today's levels. Helium is produced by the gas industry in only a handful of countries including Algeria, the United States, Russia and Qatar which means resources also depend on international relations. The inflation in recent years dates back to 2013 when the United States, one of the main producing countries, opted to liquidate and auction off its Federal Reserve stock while keeping the remaining helium for its own requirements – a decision that sent the price of helium soaring. 

In 2022, Western sanctions against the Russian economy in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine involved Western countries boycotting a production plant constructed by Russia to make up for the drop in US resources. This led to a major shortage which was "so severe that suppliers used their right of 'force majeure' to break their contracts with their regular clients and then refused to respond to other customers' requests", recalls Sébastien Turci, director of the CNRS's Purchasing and Innovation Office (DDAI). 

• 1Rare or 'noble' gases are very stable and non-reactive.

This episode left its mark on French research laboratories. At the time, Christophe Muller was the regional officer for the Hauts-de-France region – one of the CNRS's seventeen regional offices – and now holds the same post in Grenoble. He still remembers how shocked he was when presented with an unexpected €200,000 bill for replenishing the considerable helium supplies required for a 1200 MHz NMR spectrometer, the seventh most powerful of its kind in the world and the most powerful in Europe. "It's just as well I don't have cardiac issues because it was like an axe hanging over my head", he exclaims to this day. To find a response to this crisis, the regional officer had to "knock on every possible door to find money, put the spectrometer on ice and then explain all the spending to public sector funders". 

Luckily, the CNRS's Institut Néel in Grenoble hosts Europe's second largest liquefaction centre in Europe, after the similar facility at the CERN. One particularity of helium is that it is almost entirely recycled by liquefaction and following the Institut Néel's installation of its first liquefier in 1953, the laboratory has had a long tradition of cooling helium and supplying nearby research units. This supply role particularly involved the Institut Laue-Langevin and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility but in 2022 the Institut Néel also helped resupply many laboratories further afield from its own Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. All these reasons underpin Christophe Muller's view that the Institut Néel is "a major and historic site that has always been an avant-garde pioneer which was confirmed in the wake of the war in Ukraine". The DDAI learnt a great deal from this episode. Its director explains that "since 2022, the CNRS's main recommendations have been to encourage helium recovery so we depend less dependent on global fluctuations, to improve the CNRS's carbon footprint and to cut the budgetary impact of purchasing helium".

The virtues of recycling

It was in this context that Verena Poinsot, a CNRS research professor working at the Interuniversity Centre of Materials Research and Engineering1  was appointed helium project manager with the CNRS Scientific Office (DGDS). One of the major challenges for her is to up the proportion of recycled helium used in CNRS laboratories. "Recycling can account for up to 90% of the product and currently nearly 70% of the helium used at CNRS is recycled although wide disparities exist between disciplines. We consume 650,000 litres that we consume each year and recycle just under 500,000 although almost 30% is lost, representing a cost of several million euros", she explains. And more than 50% of that recycled helium comes from the liquefier at the Institut Néel. Johan Guilhot, the head of the Institut Néel's liquefaction department, is well aware of the significant savings to be made through recycling. "In 2024, we recycled 265,000 litres of helium at a liquefaction cost of €3.78 per litre, not including human resources. As a comparison, the 30,000 litres bought from a supplier to replace the helium lost through evaporation cost €35.90 per litre". On-site recycling at the Institut Néel also facilitates short-distance transport and uses low-carbon electricity, two advantages that greatly reduce the carbon footprint of this essential element for research.

• 1CNRS / Toulouse INP / Université Toulouse-III Paul-Sabatier.

As well as these advantages in terms of cost and the carbon footprint, recycling helium also helps protect research laboratories from the effects of geopolitical crises. "In periods of global shortages, small purchasers like research laboratories are never the first to be supplied", regrets the project manager. The Alps regional officer takes a similar view. "When using helium, you have to take into account the cost, regional sovereignty and energy independence from suppliers to avoid the most sensitive equipment running out of helium overnight".

However, to recycle so much helium, collection equipment and operational liquefiers are required which is where the problem lies. "The laboratories in France that consume the most helium certainly do possess large liquefaction recycling systems but many of these were purchased at the end of the 1990s so they're getting old or even obsolete which means they suffer from repeated breakdowns", laments Verena Poinsot. This is indeed currently the case for the Institut Néel's two liquefiers which were purchased in 1985 and 1996. "Breakdowns have been an issue for us for about five years now", sighs Johan Guilhot. The more recent of the two liquefiers broke down at the start of 2024 before being put back into service in July, thanks to the institutional support of the regional officer and the DGDS's helium project manager. This first success was backed up with increased support for the refurbishment or replacement of other liquefiers in France. The Institut Néel is delighted with the repair of this liquefier but also hopes this long breakdown will make it easier to replace the liquefier with "a more modern and energy-efficient machine with improved output that's more flexible to operate with its start-ups adjusted to daily variations in electricity prices", explains Virginie Simonet, deputy director of the Institut Néel and head of its condensed matter and low temperatures department. A liquefier costs around €2.5 million but Ms Simonet is sure "it will pay for itself quickly, given the price of helium". 

The CNRS as the future helium purchasing centre for higher education and research 

As well as recycling, the CNRS's helium project manager put forward the idea of reducing the cost of purchasing new helium from production sites for all the laboratories under the joint supervisory authority of the CNRS, namely centralised purchasing and this has been taken up by the organisation. The CNRS is the only public scientific and technological establishment to possess this role which was added to its articles of association in 2015. It means that "all higher education and research establishments benefit from the economically advantageous conditions obtained by the CNRS", explains Hélène Bodereau, deputy director of the DDAI and head of the national purchasing office. In practice, following a competitive bidding process in the framework of a national public procurement contract, the CNRS then obtains helium purchase pricing conditions that are applicable to all CNRS-funded laboratories and also accessible for all other public sector higher education and research structures. The procedure for the identification and selection of a single gaseous helium supplier should be finalised next year.

Finally, the last option for the CNRS is to replace helium with alternatives where possible. Verena Poinsot gives a few examples. "Other inert gases like argon or nitrogen are proving much less rare and expensive than helium and can fulfil similar functions in obtaining an inert atmosphere. The so-called 'dry' cryostats can also be used for cooling instead of helium although currently they consume a lot of energy and cool down slower".

Recycling, centralising and substituting helium are the main actions the project manager is considering for her upcoming action plan which will enable the organisation to go on 'injecting' helium into research. Truly a gas that is shaking up the whole of science despite actually being inert itself.