Many studies have shown the importance of the ratio τHe/τE in determining the level of He ash accumulation in future reactor systems. Results of the first tokamak He removal experiments have been analyzed, and a first estimate of the ratio τHe/τE to be expected for future reactor systems has been made. The experiments were carried out for neutral-beam-heated plasmas in the TEXTOR tokamak at KFA Jülich. Helium was injected both as a short puff and continuously and subsequently extracted with the Advanced Limiter Test-II (ALT-II) pump limiter. The rate at which the He density decays has been determined with absolutely calibrated charge-exchange spectroscopy and compared with theoretical models, using the Multiple Impurity Species Transport (MIST) code. An analysis of energy confinement has been made with the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) TRANSP code, to distinguish beam from thermal confinement, especially for low-density cases. The ALT-II pump limiter system is found to exhaust the He with a maximum exhaust efficiency (eight pumps) of ∼8%. We find 1< τHe/τE < 3.3 for the database of cases analyzed to date. Analysis with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) TETRA systems code shows that these values would be adequate to achieve the required He concentration with the present ITER divertor He extraction system.