Agencies’ Lack of Coordination Hindered Supply of Crucial Gas, Report Says

NY Times ^ | May 28, 2011 | MATTHEW L. WALD

[neverdem]

WASHINGTON — The United States is running out of a rare gas that is crucial for detecting smuggled nuclear weapons materials because one arm of the Energy Department was selling the gas six times as fast as another arm could accumulate it, and the two sides failed to communicate for years, according to a new Congressional audit.

The gas, helium-3, is a byproduct of the nuclear weapons program, but as the number of nuclear weapons has declined, so has the supply of the gas. Yet, as the supply was shrinking, the government was investing more than $200 million to develop detection technology that required helium-3.

As a result, government scientists and contractors are now racing to find or develop a new detection technology.

According to the Government Accountability Office report, the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which gathers the gas from old nuclear weapons, never told the department’s Isotope Program about the slowing rate of helium-3 production. That is in part because it was secret information that could be used to calculate the size of weapon stockpiles.

For its part, the Isotope Program calculated demand for the gas not in a scientific way but instead on the basis of how many commercial companies called to inquire each year about helium-3 supplies.

Representative Donna Edwards of Maryland characterized the situation as “gross mismanagement.” As the ranking Democrat on the House science committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Ms. Edwards was one of the members of Congress who asked the accountability office to study the problem after it was detected in 2008.

“With so much riding on helium-3, it is shocking to learn that the department’s forecast for demand is based simply on a telephone log tracking those who called asking about the availability of helium-3,” she said...

[miele man]

I could be mistaken but I vaguely recall that the Clinton administration slowed or shut down helium-3 production. I certainly could not testify to this because of my fuzzy memory but I recall thinking at the time that this would bite the US in the butt.

[JohnBovenmyer]

They stopped making tritium in ‘88, which is the precursor to 3He. IIRC the shortage of the former made some news during Clinton, but the anti-nuke types kept blocking it. Now if we had a space program we could get plenty of 3He from the moon. But if we’re clever we might be able to get tritium from Fukushima, where they’re reported to have more than they want! I’m sure the Japanese wouldn’t mind finding a buyer for some of their ‘waste.’

[tet68]

I suppose we can always buy that moon He3 from
the Chinese if they’ll give us credit...

[Prospero]

Plenty of Helium-3 on the Moon... Oh, that’s right, I forgot. We retreated from the Moon forty years ago, and stupidly called off any return after the last election.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Given the quantities needed, is it practical to ship it back from the moon?

Meanwhile, if tritium emits it, what prevents the creation of a special plant full of tritium to harvest the special helium from it? It takes a uranium or plutonium nuke to light off the tritium into a fusion reaction, so it’s not like such a plant would be an H-bomb ready to go off.