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The Current Transcript for July 7, 2016

Host: Mike Finnerty

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Philando!

CROWD: Castile!

VOICE: Philando!

CROWD: Castile!

VOICE: Philando!

CROWD: Castile!

VOICE: Philando!

CROWD: Castile!

MIKE FINNERTY: Hundreds chant Philando Castile’s name outside the governor's mansion in St. Paul, Minnesota in the dead of night calling for justice. One of the incredible things about this shooting is that it is playing out in real time. People watched last night live on Facebook. Facebook, the aftermath of the shooting by police from the car seat next to Philando Castile’s bleeding body and it comes the day after the Justice Department announced it was investigating another police shooting death of a Black man in Louisiana. Coming up, what will it take for things finally to change? Also today:

SOUNDCLIP

Imagine, Mr. Speaker, a world without balloons. This Congress will make the tough to keep children's birthday parties on schedule and give industries that rely on helium the lift that they deserve.

MF: Perhaps you missed the debate in Congress over the United States' Strategic Helium Reserve. Interest in helium has been rising in line with concerns over the scarcity of the resource. Some even think kids helium balloons are now just too frivolous a use for a gas that's necessary to make MRI's work. Canada is a player. There's a business opportunity here. We'll explain all of that - may even burst some of your preconceived notions. That's coming up. I'm Mike Finnerty. Welcome to the summer edition of The Current, which begins, we warn you, with the sounds of a woman who has just witnessed her boyfriend shot by police.

Back To Top »

Another victim shot to death by U.S. police spark calls for justice

Guests: Jennifer Mayerle, Camille Charles, Jabari Asim

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We got pulled over for a busted tail light in the back. And the police, he just-- He's covered. He's licenced. He’s licenced to carry. He was trying to get out his ID in his wallet out his pocket and he let the officer know that he had a firearm and he was reaching for his wallet. And the officer just shot him in his arm. [beep] Please, don’t tell me my boyfriend just went like that.

OFFICER: Keep your hands where they are, please.

VOICE: Yes, I will, sir. I'll keep my hands where they are. Please, don't tell me this, Lord. Please, Jesus, don't tell me that he’s gone.

CHILD: It’s okay, mommy.

VOICE: I can't believe they just did this. [screams]

CHILD: It’s okay. I’m right here with you.

VOICE: [sobbing] Y’all, please, pray for us, Jesus. Please, y’all. Please, pray for us.

MIKE FINNERTY: Another African-American man shot to death by police in the United States. This time, the immediate aftermath of the shooting has all been captured on video, already viewed two million times, more than that just since last night at about 9:00 pm when it all happened. It was also broadcast live on social media as the scene was playing out. The woman is heard, at first, calmly narrating the scene as the man she calls her boyfriend, Philando Castile, sits slumped and bleeding. You can even hear him moaning, motionless beside her. And the police officer who fired the shots is heard shouting the explanation, “I told him not to reach for it.” Her young daughter is also in the back seat and you can hear her trying to comfort her. This all happened at dusk in Falcon Heights, Minnesota last night, a town of about 5,000 north of the state capital, St. Paul. An officer with the St. Anthony Police Department pulled the car over, apparently, due to a broken taillight. Philando Castile was a cafeteria supervisor at a Montessori school in St. Paul. His family says he worked there for more than ten years making meals for children. He was 32 years old. His family says he died minutes after being transferred to hospital. It is the second police shooting death of a black man captured on video and revealed to the public in two days. We go first to Jennifer Mayerle is a reporter with WCCO in Minessota, and she joins us live. Jennifer, hello.

JENNIFER MAYERLE: Hello. Thank you for having me.

MF: What is the latest on what's been happening overnight and now this morning?

JENNIFER MAYERLE: You know, the latest we have heard from police is they gave us an update on their investigation. They told us-- They talked about the traffic stop that happened around 9:00, that shots were fire, that the man was taken to hospital and later died, and that the BCA, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, was called in to investigate, and, as well, that a handgun was recovered from the scene. Beyond that, we have not heard anything official from investigators. But I can tell you that overnight family and friends gathered at the hospital, community members, concerned people, and members of Black Lives Matter, Minneapolis NAACP, they gathered first at the scene of where this happened and then of the governor's mansion and were still there until a short time ago, demanding that the governor respond to what had happened here in the Twin Cities.

MF: Can you describe a little bit what that scene was like outside the governor's mansion?

JENNIFER MAYERLE: You know, it started with about 50 people and it swelled to about 200 at its highest point and people were peaceful, respectful, is the way it was described, but loud and committed to finding out what happened and demanding answers, if you will. Where I can tell you the most emotional scene was was at the hospital.

MF: What happened there?

JENNIFER MAYERLE: I arrived. Philando Castile was transported to the local hospital, JHCMC, from the scene and I arrived there minutes before his mother Valerie came out of the hospital, after just hearing from doctors that her son had died. And she came out and I was the only reporter that she spoke with and she talked to me about her son, and one of the things that she said that has stuck with me, and she said he lived by the law and he died by the law. She said she raised her son right. She raised him to be successful in life and to be a productive member of society. She said that he has been a cafeteria supervisor at a Montessori school in St. Paul and that he's worked with the school district for more than a decade. She was proud of her son. She said he liked to play X-Box and would have then come home. And she was just beside herself with what happened. When she came out of the hospital she did not yet know about the video. She was talking-- You could almost tell, she had conviction in her voice, but maybe was still in a state of shock that she had lost her only son. After she spoke with us we were standing with her. Someone showed her the video and that is when she just crumbled.

MF: Jennifer, were you there when she was watching that video?

JENNIFER MAYERLE: Yes. Yeah. There was family - her brother was with her, her daughter, my crew, and a few other family members who had gathered at the hospital. It's hard, truly, to put into words what that was like to see her watch her son that way, to see how this unfolded in the aftermath. She became so—They said she had a kind of an anxiety or panic attack, that she was taken to the hospital her about an hour, at least an hour, to be looked at and to be kind of calmed down and to make sure her health was okay.

MF: Because in the video-- I mean, we've played it on the radio, and on the television we're not showing all of the detail of what she would have seen, but she would have seen her son in the driver's seat bleeding and groaning, the last moments of his life.

JENNIFER MAYERLE: Yes. Even after that, she said that she wants answers. But we know that no matter what answer she gets it still won't kill her hurt right now and what she's feeling and what her family is feeling.

MF: I understand, from some of the reports, that they were demanding to see Philando’s body. Is that right?

JENNIFER MAYERLE: What they told us was that they'd asked doctors to see him and they were not allowed to see him at the hospital, that’s what they told us. Later, they were going to try to go to the medical examiner's office, again, to see him. At this point, I do not believe that that has happened. We are waiting to hear.

MF: What are what are some of the questions that they want answered?

JENNIFER MAYERLE: Why him? And why for this reason? The mother, from what she told us and from what I believe she had gathered from the video, was that he was reaching for a wallet and she said, why, if he was doing that and he was upfront about what he had in the car, did this happen. But, again, those are the pieces, those are the parts we don’t have, that we haven't seen, that we don't know. And his girlfriend was taken not into custody, but taken with authorities to be questioned to find out what happened.

MF: Well, she was handcuffed in part of that video that people can see. She’s handcuffed.

JENNIFER MAYERLE: She is and when we originally reported, said she was taken into custody, because that’s how they reported it. But later police told us she was not taken into custody, per se, but taken in for questioning. So I'm not sure. Maybe at the beginning there was some uncertainty about what was happening and what was unraveling at the scene. But they have now said, you know, she was taken in to be questioned about what happened.

MF: He had a permit, a legal permission, to carry a concealed weapon. Is there anything you can tell us about that?

JENNIFER MAYERLE: His sister Alise told me that they went into the class together to get their permit to carry together. She said it was some time ago. She didn't have a timeframe for us, but said that they had both talked and somehow came up that neither of them had felonies so that they could go do this together. But she also expressed concern over carrying that weapon. She said she wanted it for protection, but expressed concern over situations like this and what would happen if they had a weapon when something happened.

MF: Jennifer Mayerle, thanks for your time. Appreciate it this morning.

JENNIFER MAYERLE: Sure. Thank you.

MF: Bye bye. Jennifer Mayerle, who's a reporter with WCCO in Minnesota. And as you heard she was overnight at the scene at the hospital where Philando Castile’s mother had just learned of her son's death. Well, last night's shooting came the same day as outrage in Louisiana led to the announcement of a federal Justice Department civil rights investigation into the police shooting death of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A video shows two white police arresting Alton Sterling early on Tuesday after responding to a call about a disturbance. Alton Sterling is pinned to the ground beside a car when he is then shot dead by at least one of the officers. To discuss this week's shootings we are joined now live by Camille Charles who's a professor of sociology and African Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s in Philadelphia. And Jabari Asim is the executive editor of The Crisis, the NAACP’s flagship journal of ideas, politics, and culture. He’s in Newton, Massachusetts. Hello to you both.

JABARI ASIM: Good morning.

CAMILLE CHARLES: Morning.

MF: Camille, I'm just going to start with you just to ask you for your reaction to what you've seen. These extraordinary scenes and this video overnight, how are you processing it all?

CAMILLE CHARLES: Now, I have to say, I actually purposely not watched the video and so listening to it just now was my first time and I have actually been in tears. I think I'm just tired. You know, I study inequality and prejudice and discrimination for a living and I'm 50 years old and I think that I had always done this [inaudible] kind of sense that you may not win the fight, but you keep fighting the good fight. And I think that increasingly I and others are just kind of feeling this overwhelming sense of hopelessness that the sort of basic humanity that's afforded to most Americans just isn't in the cards somehow in the same way. There is a partial humanity that might be recognized, but somehow it always turns around to what Black people ought to do that is always a set of guidelines that is never expected for others.

MF: Jabari Asim, have you watch the video?

JABARI ASIM: I did. I watched it eight hours ago. It first appeared in the son’s feed. I have a son—I have four sons. One of my sons is 32 years old, the same age as Philando Casile, and he posted it eight hours ago on Facebook with just the line, “And this just happened.” And I was somewhat taken aback by the calm of Lavish Reynolds and it made me doubt the veracity of it at first. I said, wow, she's remarkably calm. What am I watching here? And then once I saw that it was genuine, I posted it immediately. I didn't post the video, but I posted the question, “Are there any updates on the Falcon Heights shooting?” And someone responded, go to Twitter. And that's when I went to Twitter and began to pick up the narrative. And so one of the things I'm particularly concerned with here is how the narrative will be shaped.

MF: What do you mean by that?

JABARI ASIM: The official narration is that the police have begun an investigation, but what they're actually doing is investigating Philando Castile. They're going into his background.

CAMILLE CHARLES: Right.

JABARI ASIM: They’re looking for any information they can find where they can shape the narrative. If there's a picture of him ever having been arrested or in any kind of questionable context, that's the photo we're going to see.

MF: But it remains that this video and the fact that it was live streamed, they're just they're so gripping. I mean, Camille described her reaction just hearing it for the first time. It somehow feels as though a line has been crossed, that we are living in a moment. Is that possible?

CAMILLE CHARLES: I don't know that it's a moment. I think that we just find out about it now. This isn't a moment. This is actually a critical part of American history. It's just that with social media-- Once it becomes sort of in the forefront of our thinking and we realize it's an issue, people are becoming increasingly inclined, I think, to take video, to post pictures, and to get the word out there. And in terms of social movements, that's important. I think though that, again, there's just also a sense-- I have a lot of former students who are friends on social media and so I'm seeing their posts too and I'm watching their posts change from this kind of, okay, we’ve got to get out and do something, to just saying that they feel hopeless. They don't even know what to do anymore or if doing anything is really going to make a difference. And that's concerning.

MF: I suppose one of the things that people are doing, Jabari, is that they are going straight away to their mobile phones. They are documenting these things so that people can see them. But you spoke about your concern about the police now shaping the narrative. What do you think needs to happen and what needs to happen, in your view, quickly?

JABARI ASIM: Well, I think that journalists, it's their charge. We have to charge them with attempting to get the whole story. I mean, CNN immediately went off. When Sterling was killed they found his mug shot and posted this mug shot. When Brock Turner was convicted of rape, they posted a picture of him in a suit and tie, the Stanford swimmer. So, immediately, the reshaping of the narrative has already begun. And just to pick up on Camille's point, I totally agree with her that this is not a moment, as many people have pointed out. So, what we have to do is challenge this notion that the African-American experience, the Latino experience is an illusion. It's not an illusion. This is our real life and it's becoming apparent to people via these cameras and via social media. So we have to continue to challenge this dominant narrative that suggests that we exaggerate, that we make up these things, that we misunderstood.

MF: Wasn't there a something of a reassuring event this week, at the very least, in that the Federal Justice Department announced, fairly quickly in the case of Alton Sterling, that there would be a civil rights investigation.

CAMILLE CHARLES: I would like to think so, but I think that that ends up being part of the illusion that something's going to happen. Because often those things are announced because there's fear of protest, right. There's fear of rioting and these other kinds of activities. And the truth is we can have the investigation, but we've had investigations before for other police departments where wrongdoing is found and it's not clear to me that there are the kinds of fundamental changes that have to occur. And the truth is, ultimately, it has to occur not just in the culture of policing, but it has to occur in the culture of our nation in the way that we think about Black life.

MF: Jabari, are you not at all encouraged by the fact that there was so quickly a civil rights investigation announced by the Federal Justice Department in the former case from this week, the Alton Sterling case?

JABARI ASIM: Well, I'm hard pressed to think of a single instance, Mike, in which the Department of Justice investigation has led to a conviction. I can't think of a single example. So, no, I'm not encouraged by it.

MF: So, what's the solution? I mean, it seems like almost a trite question, but there's got to be some way forward, doesn't there?

JABARI ASIM: We've been pushing for a way forward as long as long as we’ve been in the country. And I think that a lot of the attention has to be turned to the communities that oppress us. It’s clearly, it’s not the behaviour of Black people that shaped this narrative. It doesn't matter where you are or who you are or what you are doing, as a Black person in America you are legitimately susceptible to police violence. So I think the mirror has to be aimed on a larger community. And that larger community, for the most part, remains absolutely silent on this issue. They are complicit and they are, by implication, supporting this routine assassination of the average citizens.

MF: Do you agree with that, Camille Charles, that the larger community is silent on this?

CAMILLE CHARLES: In terms of—Yeah. I think you have a bunch of people who are willing to say, wow, isn't this awful? But the truth is, again, until these lives, until Black lives matter as much as their own lives matter. Because I'm a mother, right. I can't imagine having to live through that. I'm a wife and I can't imagine what that must feel like. And so until the rest of the country can personalize it that way, again, to see Black humanity in the same way that they see their own, I don't know. I honestly don't know.

MF: That's where we're going to have to end it. And thank you both for being with us on short notice. We appreciate that.

JABARI ASIM: Thank you.

CAMILLE CHARLES: Thank you.

MF: Camille Charles professor of sociology and African Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She was in Philadelphia. Jabari Asim is the executive editor of The Crisis, the NAACP’s flagship Journal of ideas, politics, and culture. He was in Newton, Massachusetts. We're going to talk about how finite the helium resource in the world is in the next half hour of the program. You're listening to the summer edition of The Current across Canada.

Back To Top »

Helium a finite resource, does much more than fill balloons

Guests: Andrea Sella, Ovi Marin

MIKE FINNERTY: Hello, I'm Mike Finnerty, you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Balloon filling]

Now, everyone wants to know why my voice sounds higher when I inhale helium.

[sucks in helium]

[high voice] Now, the simple fact is that helium is six times less dense than air, which means sound waves travel through it much faster, which makes my voice sound much higher.

MF: Helium makes even the most authoritative voice sound silly, as demonstrated there on the TV show Mythbusters. Well, there are serious concerns about the global supply of the gas. Cheryl Wiebe is the owner of Gags Unlimited in Winnipeg, where she buys enough helium to fill 10,000 balloons every month. Over the past few years, she says, dealing in helium has had its ups and its downs.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Balloon filling]

We've run into a couple of helium shortages in the last year, which actually ties us back because we're wholesale and retail, and we do rent helium. Prices went way up and not just because of the helium shortage, but because it's mined in the States, with the exchange. I literally went up 25 per cent.

[Sound: Balloon filling]

It will be a sad day when helium runs out, because helium balloons are huge. Balloon releases are huge. You know the balloon events, they're growing, especially with things like Pinterest. People finding things online all the time that they would like to do and create for their events. So yeah, it's going to change a lot of the atmosphere when we have no helium left for something like that. Balloons are fun.

MF: If the world were to run out of helium, it would mean much more than the end of some fun balloons. Helium is a critical commodity in several scientific fields, including medical technology. And fears that this resource could be depleted have been growing for several years now. So, news last week that a major helium reserve was discovered in Tanzania was cause for celebration in the helium community. And there are some helium developments closer to home as well, as Canada seeks to become a bigger global supplier. To Britain first, where Andrea Sella is a Professor of Chemistry at University College London, and he joins us from London. Professor Sella, hello.

ANDREA SELLA: Good morning, Mike.

MF: Could I ask you to take us by the hand a little bit, for those of us who aren't that strong in science, haven't looked at the periodic table since high school. What exactly is helium?

ANDREA SELLA: So helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, and normally we find it as a gas, that's the reason we can fill helium balloons with it. And because this gas is so light, then those balloons are actually buoyant, they float in air and that's one of the reasons why it has this kind of magical quality that we find so amusing. But there's a real problem. I mean, you had that clip earlier where you showed the way in which somebody's voice changes if they inhale helium, and the interesting thing is that the reason that is because the atoms of the helium are incredibly light and therefore move extremely fast. In fact, they move so fast at room temperature that what they can do, they move as fast, essentially, as a rocket that's going up to the International Space Station. So they can actually escape the Earth's pull of gravity, and that means that on the planet, any helium that we have in the atmosphere will actually be progressively lost. And so, where do we get our helium from? We actually mine it. We actually dig it out of the ground, effectively, and it's typically found with natural gas deposits, together with sort of gases like methane, that we might want to use for our energy requirements.

MF: So here's one of the things that just slightly confuses me, as it's often referred to as inert or not really moving at all, and you're telling us that the atoms are moving incredibly fast.

ANDREA SELLA: Well, the word inert, of course, we're talking about the chemistry of it, and that is whether the helium will actually undergo a chemical reaction. And it turns out that helium is a little bit like a tiny kind of chemical ball bearing. All it does is it bounces around, right, and it doesn't interact with anything. But it does move very, very fast, and so in a chemistry sense it's inert, but of course, in a physics sense, I suppose, it's moving very fast.

MF: Okay, so what can it do that other elements can't?

ANDREA SELLA: Okay, so the really important thing is the fact that these helium atoms really don't stick to each other and to anything very much. This inertness is extremely important, and that makes helium an incredibly useful refrigerant. In other words, if you cool it down cold enough, eventually it will go liquid. And in order to do that, you've got to go down to within four degrees of the lowest possible temperature, what we call absolute zero. And when you get down to those temperatures, the world becomes incredibly quiet, incredibly still, right? And at that point, all kinds of strange effects of quantum mechanics that are in a sense hidden from us at room temperature become manifest. And the most important of these is a property called superconductivity. So at very, very low temperature, there are all kinds of materials that lose electrical resistance. So whereas normally if you're using a kettle or you're using a steam iron, by passing electricity through wires, the whole thing heats up; in the case of a wire which is superconducting at those very low temperatures, there's absolutely no heating and that means there's no resistance to the current traveling through. And this means you that can make incredibly powerful permanent magnets. So long as you keep them cold, the current will continue to flow in the coils. And so for applications like MRI scanners, those huge magnets essentially into which you insert the patient to do the imaging, those magnets are actually, they've got a kind of tank of helium in them in which sit the coils.

MF: And it's also used in things like the Large Hadron Collider?

ANDREA SELLA: Oh, absolutely. Again, those are either in the case of the magnets, which actually keep the particles traveling around the ring, but also some of the detectors. You have to keep the detectors incredibly cold, again because what you want is that extraordinary kind of electrical stillness that allows you to pick out very, very weak signals. And so from a science point of view, helium is totally essential to us. All kinds of experiments in quantum computing, in understanding magnetism, and the structure of our world, really require helium because it is the best and the simplest way for us to get to those very low temperatures.

MF: Okay, and Professor Sella, we just heard Cheryl Wiebe there in Winnipeg, talking about her difficulties with helium at her shop where she fills up balloons, helium balloons, and the rising prices. What is going on with the supply of helium?

ANDREA SELLA: Well, the problem is the supply of helium is dependent on finding deposits in the ground, and these deposits, I mean, the helium is actually formed incredibly slowly, over the course of kind of geological time, by natural radioactivity that you have in rocks deep in the Earth. And because the heliums are so tiny and fast moving, they kind of travel through cracks in the rock and through little spaces, and then they accumulate in these natural gas deposits. And so there are certain places in the Earth's crust where you will find a helium deposit. The earliest and most famous of these are the ones of Texas and Oklahoma, which is where--

MF: The U.S. strategic reserve, which we kind of were talking about here.

ANDREA SELLA: That's right. The Americans called it the America, the strategic reserve, and they actually set up the strategic reserve way back in the 1930. Because in the 1930s, they imagined that helium would primarily be used for airships, and that airships had a kind of strategic function. Now, if you remember the Hindenburg, the Hindenburg, which was the great German airship, the Germans thought well, we can get round to the fact we cannot get helium, we're going to fill our airship with hydrogen. Now, hydrogen is a completely different beast. Yes, it floats, but it's chemically very reactive. And the Hindenburg actually caught fire in a spectacular disaster, and you can look up photographs on the Internet, there's amazing radio clips of descriptions of it happening. So you know, first it was their strategic reserve set up for the airship purposes, but then later on, for the purposes of advancing sort of physics, chemistry, astronomy and so on, it became incredibly important. And it's one of those facts of human nature, that if you have quite a lot of something or you think you have quite a lot of something, you don't really give it a second thought. And it was only in in recent years that we began to realize that actually, the amount of helium we have is finite.

MF: Okay.

ANDREA SELLA: Right? That the reserves, the declared reserves, are limited.

MF: Can we talk a little bit more about that with the help of Phil Kornbluth, who's a helium consultant from Bridgewater, New Jersey. Now, he is not as convinced that our supply of helium is running out. Have a listen to why.

SOUNDCLIP

There's a lot of misinformation in the media about the world running out of helium. Now, you know helium is a depleting resource like natural gas, like oil. But there are still very huge quantities of helium in the ground that have not been exploited -- and you know there may be new fields to be exploited -- you know, like the Canadian fields, which have not been exploited to a large extent until now. You know during a period of shortage, does it make sense to prioritize between applications? Yeah, probably. But as far as the world running out of helium over the long term, that's many, many years into the future. There's a lot of helium in the world. So personally, I don't think there should be a lot of concern about that.

MF: So, Professor Sella, did do you agree that the concern is exaggerated?

ANDREA SELLA: Well, I wouldn't say that it's exaggerated, but it's another one of these places where I think we need to be a little bit more mindful of what it is that we're dealing with. And you know, as we've seen, any helium that you release into the atmosphere will inevitably be lost from the planet itself, and it is only sort of replaced in the ground on timescales of millions of years. Now he's right that there are probably very, very many undiscovered deposits around the world, and that as we go hunting for further natural gas reserves, we will probably, as has happened in Tanzania, stumble across other deposits which are quite rich in helium. But what I would say to that is that that's all very well, but at some point, we're going to have to-- we have to wake up to the fact that A, helium is in demand, but at the same time, that we just can't keep exploiting natural gas, right? I mean, here we have, we're coming up in a sense against a kind of climate change limitation. Is that helium comes with natural gas, and if we're going to stop exploiting natural gas as an energy resource, where are we going to get our helium?

MF: So just as a last question, then, do you think concretely in people's everyday lives for kids' birthday parties, that that is too frivolous a use and should be stopped?

ANDREA SELLA: Look, I mean, I really don't think that small amounts of helium for those kinds of purposes should be banned. I mean, the great thing is the magic of it, the delight of the floating helium balloon, and so on. And yet, what we do know is that the use of helium worldwide is growing exponentially, and what we're looking at, we are likely to see further price crunches. And I think Mr. Kornbluth makes a very good point, and that is that actually, we need to prioritize things, we need to think strategically about this, and we have to think strategically about pricing. Is it at the moment, we think of helium essentially as disposable, and maybe we should price it in such a way that at least we make it a little bit more special.

MF: Okay, Andrea Sella, thanks for your time, really appreciate it.

ANDREA SELLA: Great pleasure.

MF: Andrea Sella is a Professor of Chemistry. He was in Britain at University College London.

SOUNDCLIP

Right now, Canada is a very small player in the global helium business. What you find in Canada is there is some gas in the ground that's mostly nitrogen, with approximately one per cent of helium concentration, and believe it or not, the one per cent concentration is considered fairly high. And at the current prices, at fairly elevated levels, it is economically viable. So, there's an opportunity there and some companies are attempting to take advantage.

MF: That's our helium consultant Phil Kornbluth, once again explaining why Canada may be poised to become a bigger player in the world helium industry. Ovi Marin is working to do just that. He is president of Quantum Helium Management, which runs a plant in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. We've reached Mr. Marin today in Chapel Hill, North Carolina today. Good morning, hello!

OVI MARIN: Good morning, Michael.

MF: You have a plant in Saskatchewan, I just mentioned, you're planning to build two more. Walk us through your business case, if you could. Why are you in the process of expanding?

OVI MARIN: Well, Quantum Helium Management is part of a quantum family, a family of quantum companies. One of them being Quantum Technology Corporation out of Squamish, British Columbia. This company has started to work in helium processes over 35 years ago, and we are a global leader in the recovery of helium in different processes, in purification, in liquefaction of helium. The professor before me was talking about the very, very low temperatures where helium liquefies. Well, we have technologies to do that.

MF: But you-- I mean, you obviously think there's a lot of money to be made.

OVI MARIN: Well, let's be fair. It's not like hitting a gold mine, but it is a sustainable business. It is a business which if done right, can bring some value to the operators. Two years ago, so starting from quantum technology with our purification technologies, we were contacted by a well owner, and about two years ago, when the helium crisis was in its midst, we started the first purification plant in Canada in 40 years, in over 40 years. And we have started to produce relatively small amounts of helium.

MF: So what is it about Saskatchewan that makes it a good place to develop a helium market?

OVI MARIN: Well, if my history's correct-- and I may be wrong, but I don't think so-- Saskatchewan was considered about 40 years ago the world capital of helium. Because underground, due to the nuclear decay the professor was mentioning before, relatively large amounts of helium have been stored. So very deep underground, generally with inert gases like nitrogen. So we have been able to take this gas from the ground, and put it through our plant, and at the end of the plant-- So we start with one per cent helium at the beginning, and then we end up with about ninety nine per cent at the end, and we can go any, however pure you want. And then we take that gas and we ship it in two trailers all around North America.

MF: I understand that you also-- I didn't realize this, most of actually what we're saying today is stuff I didn't realize-- but I understand you also recover used helium and sell that, you can use it again as sort of recycling it? Is that right?

OVI MARIN: Exactly. I would say that in our 35 years' history, Quantum has recovered more helium for our customers than we have produced in the last two years.

MF: How do you recover it? I thought, I mean, we heard in the last interview that it rises and it disappears into the atmosphere. So how do you use it again?

OVI MARIN: If you let it rise, it goes in the atmosphere and it's gone. You cannot recover it. But if you catch it right before it goes out in the atmosphere, you can take it back, put it back into the system, re-purify it, liquefy it if necessary, and reuse it. Therefore, the modern MRI units you were mentioning earlier, Mike, they are using some cold-heads, some small devices which take the gas coming out the boil off, because it's so cold it boils off, obviously at room temperature, slowly, slowly, and it is recovered by this the so-called cold-head, which re-liquefies it and put it back in the process. We have more sophisticated processes to deal with multiple units, and with different industrial applications, as well. I'll give you just an example, if I may.

MF: Sure.

OVI MARIN: We recover, for instance, the big balloons. I'm not talking about the small kids' balloons for birthday; I'm talking about the large airships which can contain up to 40,000 cubic metres of helium. Just imagine: 40,000 cubic metres of helium. And this helium is stored in membranes, essentially, which in time, allow air to go in and helium to out. So we start with 100 per cent purity in the balloon, and in, I don't know, a matter of years, maybe months or years, we get to 80, 70, whatever percentage. Where we have technologies that take that impure helium, put it through our purification system, and recover it, return it to the balloon at 99 per cent almost, 98, 99 per cent. Therefore, all these 40,000 cubic meters which would be lost if we didn't have our technology, we recover it and keep it back into the system. This is true for many industrial processes.

MF: So Mr. Marin, I mean, the big question is, and it's one that Phil Kornbluth raised, is how finite is the resource? I mean, there was this new find in Tanzania, you think there's more to be found in Saskatchewan. How rare is helium?

OVI MARIN: Well, I share Phil's opinion that we are not in an imminent helium crisis. However, extracting helium, purifying it, transporting a very light product across the globe. It's an expensive proposition. So while we still have helium, I think we have to protect it because its price is high for the consumers. I'm not talking necessarily about the one, two, three balloons which are used for a birthday, but there are consumers out there which use millions of dollars' worth of helium in their applications. So I believe we have to use helium carefully, although we are not running out for the time being and maybe for the foreseeable future because there are reserves in Tanzania, and Russia, and Canada, and the United States, and-- as for oil and natural gas, we continue to find new reserves. But the main message would be why spend money when you can save it; why not use a resource which is non-renewable in a decent manner?

MF: Okay.

OVI MARIN: Trying to recover as much as we can in order to preserve it down there underground.

MF: We have to leave it there. Ovidiu Marin, thank you very much for your time, appreciate it.

OVI MARIN: Thank you so much.

MF: Bye bye. Ovidiu Marin is the president of Quantum Helium Management. He owns a plant in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. He was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

[Music: Sting]

MF: You're listening to the summer edition of The Current on CBC Radio across Canada. That's our program for today. Finally today, we had just a few moments ago a talk about helium and the search for new stores of the lighter-than-air gas. One of the more novel uses of helium in recent years was by rock musician Jack White of The White Stripes in 2012. He released a new single by helium balloon: he attached 1,000 vinyl copies of his song Freedom at 21 to helium balloons and released them from his record label headquarters in Nashville. Lucky fans discovered them as far away as Huntsville, Alabama. So here is that song, which was eventually released on Jack White's album, Blunderbuss. I'm Mike Finnerty, thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current, and we'll see you tomorrow.

[Music: Freedom at 21 by Jack White]

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July 7, 2016 full episode transcript

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