Nick Fitske

Nick Fitske orders about $6,000 of liquid helium every three months.

He's the director of the magnetic resonance facility at Mississippi State University.

And he needs the helium because it's extremely cold, as in 450 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

Semiconductor chip makers need helium too, and it's produced as a byproduct.

And because only a few places do that?

And there's a reason we're only feeling the bottleneck now, about four weeks into the war.

It takes about a month to get helium to its destinations.

Maura Garvey, who runs Intelligas Consulting, says restarting production is going to be difficult, even if the Strait reopens today.

It's going to take them a few months to get everything back up to speed.

That's not going to happen until sometime between June and August.

Garvey says the helium in storage can hold us over until then.

I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace.