Mardai is an abandoned uranium mining town located in the

Dornod Dornod ( mn, Дорнод, ; "East") is the easternmost of the 21 aimags (provinces) of Mongolia. Its capital is Choibalsan. Population Halh are the ethnic majority of the Dornod aimag, but Buryat ethnic group is 22.8% of population total ...

aimag of

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

, in a remote area north of Choibolsan. The Dornod area was prospected for

uranium ore Uranium ore deposits are economically recoverable concentrations of uranium within the Earth's crust. Uranium is one of the more common elements in the Earth's crust, being 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold. It ...

by the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

beginning in the late 1940s. In 1972, a Soviet geological expedition discovered significant uranium reserves and in 1988 the Erdes Mining Enterprise began operation. Mardai was a "secret city" that housed the mine's Russian engineers and technical staff. Mining stopped in 1993 following the fall of the Soviet Union and Mardai, which had housed about 10,000 Soviet personnel, was completely abandoned. Local Mongolian people then scavenged the city for building materials, leaving behind a ruined ghost town.

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Ураны төлөөх уралдаан ба уралцаанCows roam where people once lived
Ghost towns in Asia {{Mongolia-geo-stub