By Charlie Campbell January 22, 2025 4:00 AM EST I t was almost three decades ago that French miners decamped to the southern Gobi Desert in search of hidden riches. By 2006, they found what they were looking for: rich deposits of uranium lurking beneath the windswept sand dunes and rusting oil pumps. A series of pilot projects and environmental and economic assessments followed. On Jan. 17, Mongolia’s first uranium mine, Zuuvch-Ovoo , was finally green-lighted with the signing of a $1.6