It's interesting, at least for the science geeks among us, that the same things that control the distribution of gold in a plume of melted rock... the temperature, pressure, and content and chemistry of other minerals in the melt... also are the source of the issues in steel production that matter in application of niobium.
Using "a little" niobium can have multiple benefits...
I've pointed out here a couple of times that the economics of steel tend to require using more and more niobium as things get tougher in the steel markets...
The economics of that are related to the science, of course, with the amount of niobium that you use being related to cost savings in steel production...
It's still not as simple as tossing in a bit of niobium and saving money...
Steel production is complex, and increasing the use of niobium in steel production requires increasing the capacity for employing higher temperature processes...
When you have the capacity required to employ it... there are a couple of advantages. Not least is that the enhanced characteristics of niobium alloyed steel mean meeting engineering requirements with less steel... so, a small addition of niobium can mean a significant reduction in iron used to attain the desired properties...
The same thing is true, though, in other applications where complex alloys are specified for particular purposes, where the addition of a small amount of niobium can mean that the same engineering requirements can be meet while reducing the amount of other alloying materials... so, adding a very small amount of niobium can mean reducing the amount of chromium required by enough that adding the niobium directly reduces costs of other alloy materials...
Here's a link from our primary competitor that provides a pretty good set of examples showing how niobium use alters process requirements, engineering qualities of the steel, and production costs in a variety of different alloys:
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