Russia reveals World's largest diamond mine

Russia has just declassified news that will shake world gem markets to their core: the discovery of a vast new diamond field containing trillions of carats, enough to supply global markets for another 3,000 years.

They decided to keep it secret after discovery, and not to exploit it apparently because Russia's huge diamond operations in Mirny, Yakutia, were already producing immense profits in what was then a tightly controlled world market.

The Soviets were also producing a range of artificial diamonds for industry, into which they had invested heavily.

The veil of secrecy was finally lifted over last weekend, and Moscow permitted scientists from the nearby Novosibirsk Institute of Geology and Mineralogy to talk about it with Russian journalists.

According to the official news agency, ITAR-Tass, the diamonds at Popigai are "twice as hard" as the usual gemstones, making them ideal for industrial and scientific uses.

The institute's director, Nikolai Pokhilenko, told the agency that news of what is in the new field could be enough to "overturn" global diamond markets.

"The resources of super hard diamonds contained in the fields, by a factor of 10, bigger than the world's all known reserves," Mr. Pokhilenko said. "We are speaking about trillions of carats. By comparison, present-day known reserves in Yakutia are estimated at 1 billion carats."

The type of diamonds at Popigai is known as "impact diamonds," which theoretically result when something like a meteor plows into a graphite deposit at high velocity. The Russians say most such diamonds found in the past have been "space diamonds" of extraterrestrial origin found in meteor craters.

Source: Government Web Portal