After 17 years of work, Chinese geologists have made a minerals breakthrough: they discovered the country's first 10,000-ton level leaching sandstone-type uranium deposit in the Yili basin, which is in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Yili, in the northern part of Xinjiang, thus becomes the country's largest source of leaching sandstone-type uranium deposits.

General engineer Wang Cheng said that the deposit would produce more than 300 billion yuan (about 40 billion U.S. dollars) worth of uranium, coal and associated minerals, with coal resources totaling more than 4 billion tons.

He said the find would boost development of an existing large-scale coal and electricity production base in the region.