Quantum computers cool on an isotope that only nuclear programs make. Helisep is developing a quantum sieve that intercepts it from helium already moving through the world's pipelines, keeps the helium-3, and gives the rest back, and has published the map of where that helium is.
Superconducting quantum processors compute within thousandths of a degree of absolute zero, and the dilution refrigerator that takes them there circulates a mixture of helium-3 and helium-4 that nothing has replaced at scale. Nearly every liter of helium-3 on the market began as tritium inside a weapons or reactor program, gated by a 12.3 year half life that no amount of demand can shorten. [8] [7]
Bluefors, the leading maker of dilution refrigerators, has agreed to buy up to ten thousand liters a year from 2028, and IBM's modular cryogenic architecture gives every quantum cell its own helium-3 charge from 2027 onward. [5] [17]
Federal output runs near eight to ten thousand liters a year, Canada is at a similar level with no path to more, and rationing after the last shortage moved the price from under one hundred dollars a liter to a thousand and beyond. [14]
Commercial helium carries helium-3 at 0.1 to 10 parts per million, and most of the world's helium never passes through a liquefier, which means no separation route serves it today. [24] [18]
A separation company lives or dies on feedstock, so the Atlas fuses four public datasets into 23,553 georeferenced records, each one linked back to its source, and the working layer is open for anyone to interrogate. Rendered below live from the database.
You already ship the feedstock. A hosted skid turns a trace constituent your plant instruments cannot see into a royalty stream, and the helium you sell today flows back into your line.
Distillation plants run far leaner on ten percent feed than on raw helium, and laboratories need calibration mixtures today. Quantum manufacturers remain the end demand pulling the whole chain.
Helium-3 enters the United States free of duty from any country, and domestic supply resilience, end user screening, and export control under ECCN 1C232 are design inputs from the start.
