Uchquduq (sometimes spelled as Uchkuduk, uz, Üçquduq; russian: Учкуду́к) is a city in the north of

Navoiy Region Navoiy Region ( uz, Навоий вилояти, Navoiy viloyati, russian: Навоийская область) is one of the regions of Uzbekistan. It is located in the central north/northwest of the country. It covers an area of (a large part ...

Uzbekistan Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked co ...

. It is the seat of Uchquduq District. The city's name means "three draw-wells" in Uzbek. It is located at , at an altitude of 193 meters in the middle of the Kyzyl Kum Desert. Its population is 26,800 (2016).

History

Uchkuduk was founded in 1958, after a small prospecting party found deposits of

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 ...

. In the late 1960s, the development of open pit and underground mining led to the rapid growth of the settlement, with workers, engineers and technicians from all over the Soviet Union. It was elevated to city status in 1978. Until 1979, Uchkuduk had the status of a " closed secret city," as it supplied much of the raw material for nuclear weapons in the

Soviet military The Soviet Armed Forces, the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union and as the Red Army (, Вооружённые Силы Советского Союза), were the armed forces of the Russian SFSR (1917–1922), the Soviet Union (1922–1991), and th ...

arsenal. The mining operations are now under the control of the Navoi Mining and Metallurgy Combinat (NMMC), which continues to mine and process uranium using

in-situ leach In-situ leaching (ISL), also called in-situ recovery (ISR) or solution mining, is a mining process used to recover minerals such as copper and uranium through boreholes drilled into a deposit, ''in situ''. In situ leach works by artificially disso ...

processes. The company also produces gold by the same process. Aeroflot Flight 7425 crashed near Uchkuduk on July 10, 1985. The Uzbek group Yalla made a Soviet-wide hit named after the city.

References

Populated places in Navoiy Region Cities in Uzbekistan Uranium mines in the Soviet Union Mining in Uzbekistan Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union Cities and towns built in the Soviet Union Closed cities {{Uzbekistan-geo-stub