Researchers find game-changing helium reserve in Tanzania

[DFighter]

(CNN)Helium may best be known as the lighter-than-air gas used to fill party balloons, but it's also key to medical applications like MRI scans and for nuclear power.For years, there have been global shortages of the element -- Tokyo Disneyland was once forced to suspend sales of its helium balloons.That's all set to change, however, with the discovery of what researchers called a "world-class" helium gas field in Tanzania's East African Rift Valley.A group of researchers from Oxford and Durham universities, working with the Norwegian helium exploration company Helium One, have discovered what they believe is a vast supply of the element in an unlikely place.

"Their research shows that volcanic activity provides the intense heat necessary to release the gas from ancient, helium-bearing rocks," according to a statement from the University of Oxford. "Within the Tanzanian East African Rift Valley, volcanoes have released helium from ancient deep rocks and have trapped this helium in shallower gas fields."
 

However, the gas traps are often located too close to a volcano and the helium becomes heavily diluted by other gases such as carbon dioxide."We are now working to identify the 'goldilocks-zone' between the ancient crust and the modern volcanoes where the balance between helium release and volcanic dilution is 'just right," said Diveena Danabalan, of Durham University's Department of Earth Sciences.

Full article: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/28/africa/helium-discovery-tanzania/index.html