Why the US Energy Department Added Helium to Its Critical Material List on 27 October 2026, and Where Quantum Computing Appears in 91 FR 67558

What the Department of Energy published on 27 October 2026

The US Department of Energy added helium to its Critical Material List in a notice published in the Federal Register on 27 October 2026 as 91 FR 67558. Assistant Secretary Audrey Robertson of the Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation signed it on 21 October. The legal basis is section 7002(a)(2) of the Energy Act of 2020, which lets the Secretary of Energy name materials with a high supply-chain risk that serve an essential function in energy technologies. The notice has no comment period. Helium joins the 18 critical materials for energy on the 2023 list and metallurgical coal, added in May 2025.

Where quantum computing appears in the helium notice

The summary calls helium non-substitutable for semiconductor manufacturing, leak testing of natural gas infrastructure and quantum computing, and essential to medical and scientific uses. The justification in the body rests on chips and AI infrastructure. Quantum computing is named once and is not developed further.

Why the notice matters for dilution refrigerators and helium-3

Superconducting and most spin-qubit processors run inside dilution refrigerators that circulate a mixture of helium-3 and helium-4. The designation covers helium without qualification, yet the notice contains no isotope-specific analysis, and helium-3 supply follows its own route: DOE's helium-3 is a byproduct of tritium processing at the Savannah River Site, sold through the DOE Isotope Program. What the designation does for the cold end of the quantum stack depends on what DOE publishes next.