Orano begins construction on Mongolia’s Zuuvch Ovoo uranium project

A ceremony at Zuuvch Ovoo marked more than the start of construction. Orano has turned a long-running uranium plan in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert into an active build, with the site now on a four-year path toward production and the first real signs of a new supply line for the global nuclear fuel cycle.

The event brought together the governor of Dornogobi province, the governor of Ulaanbadrakh sum and the secretary of Mongolia’s Nuclear Energy Commission, a line-up that made clear how closely the project is tied to both regional development and national energy policy. Orano said the project is being carried out with its subsidiary Badrakh Energy and Mongolian partners, and described the start of construction as a decisive milestone.

The scale behind that milestone has been building for years. Orano has been present in Mongolia for more than 25 years and has explored the Gobi since 1997. It discovered Zuuvch Ovoo in 2010, while the deposit itself was officially registered in 2016. In January 2025, Orano and the Mongolian government signed the investment agreement that cleared the way for development and operation, with senior officials including N. Uchral, B. Javkhlan, Ts. Tuvaan and S. Narantsogt present alongside French minister Laurent Saint-Martin and Orano executives Nicolas Maes and Xavier Saint Martin Tillet.

Before the build phase, the project’s in-situ leach system was already tested in the field. The pilot plant ran from July 2021 to December 2022 without safety or environmental incidents and produced about 10 tons of natural uranium. Orano says nearly all of the pilot staff were Mongolian nationals, with only two foreign experts among 52 workers on site, a sign that local staffing is being treated as core infrastructure, not an afterthought.

The production plan is the part of Zuuvch Ovoo that matters far beyond Mongolia. Orano expects about 2,500 tonnes of uranium a year over an estimated 30-year lifespan, with roughly 1,600 direct and indirect jobs tied to the project. The company also says more than 51 percent of the direct benefits will go to the Mongolian state, while other reporting has put annual budget contributions at 520 billion MNT and the National Wealth Fund share at 61.5 billion MNT. Orano says it will fully finance the project itself, with no operational or financing risk borne by the state.

For Mongolia, which has not mined uranium since the Dornod deposit closed in 1995, Zuuvch Ovoo now looks less like a promise and more like a build sheet. The long uranium conversation has finally reached the point where the next milestone is no longer paperwork, but the first barrels of yellowcake entering the pipeline.