Under Pressure and Moonlight: The Visibility Continuum of Global Helium Supply Chains for Nuclear Fusion Energy

Part of the Deep Tech and Society seminar series. This session is hybrid: join online, or in person in Glasgow. Free and open to all; register through Microsoft Teams.

This paper examines how critical infrastructure networks are politically concealed, tracing how the global supply chains of helium isotopes fluctuate across a dynamic visibility continuum. By interrogating the hidden spaces of global logistics, we trace how resource access thresholds shape the development of next-generation nuclear fusion energy architectures. Drawing from William Davies’ (2019) political economy of infrastructure, we map how these resource corridors are engineered to remain hidden from public view under a mask of consumer ignorance until a systemic bottleneck triggers a sudden, hyper-visible fracture.

Methodologically, this research pairs critical human geography with a data-driven QGIS spatial modelling matrix to track coordinate-specific shipping vectors, state military enclosures, and corporate aerospace entities. The findings reveal that each stage of the helium network is governed by a distinct spatial threshold. Helium-4 transportation is bound by high-cost cryogenic containers and a strict 45-to-60-day pressure lifespan, rendering it vulnerable to maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz. Conversely, terrestrial Helium-3 remains locked behind sovereign state military secrecy walls, restricted by the fixed 12-year subatomic half-life of tritium decay.

We argue that this acute terrestrial scarcity violently forces private venture capital off-world to enclose the lunar commons under the legal shields of the Artemis Accords. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that a viable nuclear fusion future demands an interdisciplinary critical infrastructure framework that equally prioritises every node in the supply chain matrix.

About the speakers

Eleanor S. Armstrong is a Space Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, UK. Armstrong is Early Career Research Lead at the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space; and she leads the Constellations Lab on Feminist Approaches to Outer Space. Her research focuses on (1) queer feminist approaches to materials and heritage, particularly the presentation of femininities, feminisms, and femmes in public discourses about outer space, and (2) the materiality of outer supply chain materialities of outer space. Her first book “Exhibiting Outer Space” is under contract with Routledge’s Museums in Focus series. Armstrong is co-lead of the international biannual conference ‘Space Science in Context’ with Divya M. Persaud; and co-developer of the design studio EXO-MOAN with Akvile Terminaité.

Aamina Azam is a third-year Geography student at the University of Cambridge. Over the summer, she worked as a research intern for the FOSTER project run by the UK Atomic Energy Agency, focusing on critical human geography, geopolitical infrastructures, and the material supply chains of emerging deep-tech and energy sectors. Her project mapped the complex spatial and temporal vulnerabilities of terrestrial and extra-terrestrial helium supply networks for the next-generation nuclear fusion sector.