Idk how I got onto this but I was just googling shit and I was wondering how we are running out of helium. I read that helium is the one non-renuable element on this planet because it comes from the result of radioactive decay. But from my memory and the D- I got in highschool chemistry, helium is number 2 on the periodic table of elements and hydrogen is number 1, so why can’t we just take a fuck ton of hydrogen, do some chemistry shit and turn it into helium? I know it’s not that simple I just don’t understand why it wouldn’t work.
Edit: I get it, it’s nuclear fusion which is physics, not chemistry. My grades were so back in chemistry that I didn’t take physics. Thank you for explaining it to me!
In: Chemistry
We literally can and do exactly that. That’s what nuclear fusion reactors do, and there’s been some exciting breakthroughs with those lately. Google ITER etc.
>so why can’t we just take a fuck ton of hydrogen, do some chemistry shit and turn it into helium
because like charges repel, so getting the two H nuclei close enough together that they actually fuse requires squeezing the hydrogens together REALLY hard while also heating it to literally *millions* of degrees. [This is a machine we currently use to do it.](https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/2022/better-nuclear-fusion-2.jpg)
So the real problem, like so often, is actually money. We DO turn hydrogen into helium, but it takes a billion-dollar fusion reactor to make fractions of a gram of helium this way. All the money in the world couldn’t make a useful amount of helium this way via any method we know of.
TLDR: It’s theoretically possible *and we’ve done it*, but it’s incredibly expensive and makes tiny amounts of helium, so it wouldn’t be worth it.
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