In China there was discovered a reservoir of over 100 000 tons of niobium,

the biggest reservoir of this kind in the country,  in the Uyghur autonomous region Xinjiang, announced Xu Hainin, engineer at the Natural Resources Institute of the Chinese Geological Sciences Academy.

“The volume of this reservoir overcomes the total reserve identified in the country, which is 80 000 tones”, he said. The value of the reservoir is 130 trillion yuans (19 billion dollars). The reservoir also contains a tantalum reserve of over 10 000 tones and other rare metals.

The niobium and the tantalum, two rare metals, are used at a large scale in electronics, aviation, atomic energy and mechanical industry.

The mining of the reservoir has begun in 2007 and the costs are until now up to approximately 20 million yens.