Fred Weir
Christian Science Monitor
September 17, 2012
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.
The Soviets discovered the bonanza back in the 1970s beneath a
35-million-year-old, 62-mile diameter asteroid crater in eastern Siberia
known as Popigai Astroblem.
They decided to keep it secret, and not to exploit it, apparently
because the USSR’s huge diamond operations at Mirny, in Yakutia, were
already producing immense profits in what was then a tightly controlled
world market.
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