Most Americans do not know there is a helium shortage. Helium is crucial to industry. Example: helium is used in welding. Without helium our industrial base is threatened.
There's a helium shortage because it's being used up at a rate faster than it's produced. The only way it's produced is decay of Uranium and Thorium thru alpha emission. An alpha particle is a helium nuclei. Wonder why so much helium is trapped in that spot and where is the radioactive substance that produced it. I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask that question.
@@sammylacks4937 Granite bedrocks have all the source material to provide the He, the trapping part is a function of the sediments and long range stability of the sediments that have somehow managed to keep the gas in place for a very long time. That region has some of the oldest rocks on the planet so it ticks all the boxes for a stable trap.
The entire reason for the production and reserve of helium at Amarillo in the first place was to supply helium to the dirigible fleet, which was going to the the big thing in the 1910s through the 1930s. Helium had the advantage over the alternate use of hydrogen as exhibited by the Hindenburg. In fact, the US specifically withheld helium from the Germans as a security measure. In the 90s the decision was finally made that blimps were not going to be a big deal after all and the program was ended. The availability of this now-cheap, abundant helium onto the market allowed for the utilization of it in then-budding technologies. Those technologies have now developed to the point where the demand outpaces the supply.
Actually, helium is a waste gas produced continually by radioactive decay in the earth's crust, mantle, and core. It emerges and then quickly escapes into space, but it's still continually present in the atmosphere during the escape. Processes that extract gases from the atmosphere, such as nitrogen, end up removing and discarding helium during the process. This could be captured, but the industry isn't setup to do that and has no interest in changing.
The depth of the well is very shallow - which will make development easier and less expensive. The old He resource in Texas/OK/KS was a by product of natural gas which was deeper and less concentrated.
Some fools in 1996 initiated this: The Helium Stewardship Act requires that the BLM dispose of all helium assets including the Cliffside Field helium storage reservoir and pipeline system.
All that released pressure and gases must be replaced with something to prevent land collapses. That something will be the freshwater aquifers they destroy drilling.
That's because the private businesses that bribe congress must get their profits ahead of any national security consideration. This "shortage" is entirely self-inflicted.
why is every govt bill named the opposite of what it does.? stewardship ??? that should mean conserve but the exact opposite happened . sell it all for money now so private equity can pocket the money.
So the public owned the largest storage/deposit and then it was sold off to private equity and now the price skyrockets? We haven't learned anything, have we.
@@ErikPortlandyour boy Bill Clinton signed off on the Helium Privatization Act of 1996. And the bill was amended in 2013 under Obama to sell it at auction.
So I just looked it up and it's not that easy to find the numbers but a source I found said that 7% of helium is used for balloons but this includes party balloons and weather balloons. Weather balloons are absolutely massive and use up tanks and tanks of helium. Party balloons are however much more abundant. The point is it's difficult to say which uses more helium but let's just say balloons use 5% and weather balloons use 2%. This means that 95% of the helium is going into industry. Another way of looking at this is that if you ruin every kid's party in the United States for 20 years you would get one year worth of supply. Of course that's based on wild assumptions like the totals never changing. I think that party balloons are a good scapegoat but not likely to be the real problem. A good balloon will stay inflated for anywhere from one day to one year if it's mylar. The industry that I think that's wasting it is welding. The gas is just flowing out into the atmosphere tank after tank after tank with no attempt at capturing the gases. There are other alternatives depending on the situation. I'm not saying that welders should give it up either just that if you're going to attack somebody it's better not to attack children. I know the other people have party balloons other than children.
@@josephwheeler1great comment. Imo ,party balloons floating around do more damage to wildlife and why I don’t like them . Just my opinion which means little to most
Ah good, welders use helium as a shielding gas because it's inert, and since it's lighter than air, you have to use a higher flow rate than you would using argon, so we could use all the helium we can get! Keep digging.
It’s way more important that for welding, don’t get me wrong I love me some heliarc, however medical and semiconductor applications are far more important.
I only did MIG (Metal Inert Gas) welding with mild steel and stainless. They use mainly Argon & CO2 Maybe a certified welder can comment but I don't know of Helium being used and most likely because of the high cost.
@@Brian-uy2tj it’s used for TIG, the original patent name was “Heli-arc” and used helium for welding magnesium and aluminum. It’s still used when available for thick aluminum as it has a higher ionization temperature than argon.
If they let the well blow for five days they lost a lot of gas. The pressures that deep are enormous. Apparently they shut the well in, and now they are redrilling trying to hit the same pocket.
Wait, 2011? The discovery occurred in 2011 and it’s STILL not stabilized nor a confirmed source? I own mining stocks and have experience with bullion, but I can’t recall a gas mine taking this long to stabilize. Especially for an economically detrimental element. What’s the delay, anyone know what’s going on here?
Didn't we once have a huge reserve of helium maintained because it was so important to our national security interests. What happened to it? My local welding supplier doesn't even have helium available, the price and availability is just too unstable. It used to be refined from natural gas but apparently it isn't profitable to extract it so most of it is just wasted. The reserve, I think it was in Texas is about to run out in 2025. The BLM assets in Texas are being auctioned off and there doesn't seem to be any attempt to address the looming shortages about to emerge when the reserves are all gone. As a hobby welder, I will probably never be able to afford use helium for welding aluminum again (heliarc).
It's created from the decay of radioactive substances such as uranium, thorium, and the like. More than likely, this area was rich in these elements. As such, there may be a lot of lead nearby.
It's an element. It cannot be manufactured, and it forms no compounds, so it can't be refined from ore. Once it's released into the atmosphere it finds its way into space and leaves Earth altogether. It's formed only by radioactive decay in the Earth's core. It's very common in the universe, but not on Earth.
That's huge if it pans out. I'm surprised it was found way up there in the tip of Minnesota. Most of our helium has been in an area between Wyoming and Texas. And we've been exporting a lot of it. Why have we been exporting it if it's running out?
It'smostly discovered in gas and oil country due to that's where they drill all the wells, the deposits are where there's significant uranium capped by a sealing layer of rock.
Just another reason for foreign mining entities to punch holes through Minnesota's aquifers. Next it will be gold, silver, nickel or what ever. Beware of the greed involved.
It’s not about greed fool! It’s about advancing technology and innovation of Western Civilization what and how do you think the devices you use daily and are now typing on was invented, developed and manufactured for you to use? And name one Society throughout Civilization of mankind that has not run on Greed?? Answer: NONE!! Collective Ideologies are the Greediest and most corrupt in existence history has proven that over and over! More Liberal Lunacy living in fantasy candy land!!
I can't believe they wasted all of that helium for FIVE DAYS. Didn't someone have or at least bring in a simple explosimeter?? I'm sure the MN state environmental agency must had plenty on hand that they use for their Underground Storage Tank program. Sheesh.
Recovering the helium from this gas stream will require extreme cryogenic methods. Getting the gas stream down to 4° Kelvin liquifies the helium for storage and transport. Along the way to 4° other gas constituents are liquified and removed until only the helium remains. Since the gas stream is 10% helium by volume this will require a large cryogenic system which will require a lot of capital. Not sure how Minnesota's miners will adapt to this completely different technology but it can be done.
@@josephwheeler1 Oh balloon usage is about 5-8% of total hellum usage. The real problem is that it just floats off into space and is too non-reactive. It is a finite resource tied (mostly) to fossil fuel harvesting (oil and natural gas).
I don't know why it's a surprise to find it there. It's a location where intrusive magmatics from the Mid Continent Rift system are at or near the surface. This is the same inactive rift that brings the joy of radon to Minnesota along the I-35 corridor. It runs to the southwest at least as far as Wichita KS, most of the way filled with sediment and glacial till.
Helium makes up about 0.0005% of the earth's atmosphere. This trace amount of helium is not gravitationally bound to the earth and is constantly lost to space. The earth's atmospheric helium is replaced by the decay of radioactive elements in the earth's crust.
@@talusranch990 Earth's gravity is strong enough to hold most gases, including the lighter gases like helium. However, helium is a bit of an exception due to its extremely low density. The reason helium can escape Earth's gravitational pull is related to its low molar mass and the kinetic theory of gases.
@@zaz4667 nice double speak, it's not different that any other matter. You should have said something about solar wind then I may have thought about it.
It's hard to disagree that "journalism" is almost universally trash currently, but we can deduce the gas composition from other clues given anyway. First, the drilling guy says that the crew evacuated when the initial blowout happened, expecting an explosion, but says no explosion happened and the gas was nonflammable. This means that while natural gas (methane) was expected, there was an insufficient fraction of it present to reach the lower flammability limit of 5%. There is a clear shot of a mass spectrogram at 1:15 showing everything they're seeing at a depth of 90ft, so no helium yet. There is a huge peak at 28 m/Z, that's dinitrogen (N2) and one at 14 m/Z (monatomic nitrogen), the second largest peak at 3 m/Z is oxygen, there is another large peak at 40 m/Z, that's argon, another peak at 44 m/Z, that's carbon dioxide, and some large peaks around 18 m/Z, water vapor. There are some hydrocarbons present in smaller amount, and that's probably what's creating the repeating ever smaller peaks at 58, 72, 86, 100 m/Z - butane, pentane, hexane, heptane, etc. in the simple alkane series. Note that the y axis is logarithmic and even a probable methane peak at 16 m/Z is orders of magnitude smaller than the nitrogen at 28. The nonflammable components nitrogen, argon, and carbon dioxide will make up the vast majority of the admixture of gas (apart from the 10% helium noted) at depth in the main pocket.
Why would they bother. The amount of Qanon and conspiracy theorists is at an all time high. 40% of Americans dont believe vaccinating their childed is important. People who have spent decades in their fields learing the complexities needed to have their knowledge and skill are ignored, mocked, harassed, and threatened. Why? Because they read an article. Not in The New England Journal of Medicine, PubMed, or The American Journal of Medicine. No they read something that someone shared on fuckbook. Or listened to dipshit Rogan or his ilk. So now they know better than combined knowledge of millions of scientists and doctors. Then theirs the fact that this segment was close to 6 minutes long. If its more that 2 minutes long or easily chantable people don't want to watch it. Muonium's answer is an excellent description of gas chromatography. Thank you so much for explanation and detail you put into it. But since I only understand about a 2 paragraphs description of the field; I had to read a couple of Wikipedia articles to just begin to understand. That took me maybe 1/2hr. Roughly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they haven't read a book in whole or in part in the past year. (Pew) Even those that do declined in the number reading more than 10 books, from 35% in 2016 to 27% in 2021. That's just reading any book. Not having to research part of a news segment that most people didn't even watch in totality. People who go to school are mocked. And those that teach are ignored and harassed. I'm not trying to harass either of you. But just look at some of the other comments on the video; or almost any video. Dumb or mocking statements abound. Not anyone commenting after reading and understanding about the Strategic Helium Reserve. Why drillers would bolt after hitting a gas pocket. These could answered by doing some quick research. But people don't want to think. They don't nuance. They want it black or white. Not one the millions of shades of gray between the to scale. TL/DR Sorry just needed say something before the weight of stupidity suffocated me.
The half-life of tritium, also known as H-3 (a radioactive isotope of hydrogen), is approximately 12.32 years. This means that it takes about 12.32 years for half of a given quantity of tritium to decay into helium-3 through beta decay.@@missano3856
Oooops! 00:05:36 - There is no such thing as a, "Steel Mine." Steel is an artificial alloy manufactured by adding carbon to Iron. Can I have that man's job? --The guy who said, "Steel Mine," I mean. I'm over 50 yrs old, unemployed at the moment, and that job of his looks pretty sweet from where I'm sitting.
Considering that the Iron Range is one of the primary producers of iron used in the manufacture of steel, and that steel manufacturing is the primary use of iron mined in the area, it makes perfect sense that a worker would refer to "mining steel."
Yeah, I see. "A worker," that's thinking only of himself, right while he's trying to speak as if he is not only thinking of himself. I'm writing about a range called, "Duping the public." Because, "We, The People," are being robbed, my friend. @@-108-
They weren't expecting to hit gas, but were looking for precious metals, so weren't using a blowout preventer. They capped it because it was the only way to shut off the flow.
Setting Casing every day doesn’t sound right. The Casing is usually set into solid Bedrock and if needed it is Cemented into the Bedrock. The main purpose of the Casing is to prevent the Overburden from falling in and contaminating the Drillhole and causing downhole problems like stuck pipe.
@@-108- There are different ways to set the Casing. You can use a Casing Shoe to advance the Casing to Bedrock but if you have a lot of Overburden there is a good chance that the Casing will plug with Rock from the Overburden and have to be pulled out and cleaned out or you could put a Core Barrel on a Rod String and go in and clean the Casing out and start advancing the Core Barrel ahead of the Casing alternating from the Core Barrel to the Casing until you get to Bedrock. You can also run a Tri-Cone Bit to Bedrock and set the Casing or you can use a Down Hole Hammer to set Surface Casing,then switch to a smaller Hammer to Drill the Hole to Bedrock.
"... they hit something that set off a reaction ..." -- no, helium is one of the noble gases and not reactive; the drillers breached a pocket of helium under high pressure.
Seems like they would have been prepared to cap off anything the drilling encountered with an immediate wellhead.Loosing valuable resources just popping holes to see what comes out.
They were drilling for base metals and did not expect to hit gas. They took off in a hurry thinking that it might be flammable. A lot of exploration sights are remote with little to no road access. Do the OP and the replier have any idea how much it costs to fly in equipment by helicopter?
@@mikedavison3400 They’re still subject to Federal regs.The Feds are not shy about burdening us with all their costly environmental regulations,but lucrative mining companies can test drill without a casing to drop a valve on.I’m sure a drilling rig has room aboard for a 5-6” cap or valve.My neighbor in Douglas WY hired drillers to get irrigation water for alfalfa field.They hit gas and capped it off the same day.
They are also hunting for natural white Hydrogen.. in such areas. Helium is the cream on the drilling cake that makes drilling deeper for Hydrogen reserves ... At the moment green Hydrogen is expensive to make in terms of energy required and plant. 🧙♂️
@@jbbuzzable Okay. If the original hole was right there. And they identified what was coming out, Helium, before they capped it. Seems like they would take the cap off and detect if there is still any pressure.
Helium is formed by alpha decay ions collecting electrons fro neighboring materials, could be granite bedrock. granite is a good source of radon gas be cause it contains isotopes of uranium once I entered a room in a nuclear power plant by count rate meter pegged high, the room was a ground water sample room, that deep enough to allow the radio trapped under ground to vent into the room I was quite sur praised, my actions upon this dis covery led to access to this room being restricted security had routine guard posts in the room they were stopped immeadiately.
In a few years helium will become precious and indispensable element in advanced manufacturing technologies. Wasting helium in balloons should be a crime.
Space X rockets ULA ETC use a vast amount of helium. It is used to keep the rockets' structure rigid and fill the void in the fuel tanks as the fuel is being depleted..
Prediction: Helium will be opposed in an anti business - anti mining state like Minnesota for whatever environmental reason imaginable. Jobs and Tax revenue are a poor reason to improve the economy on the Iron Range
