Located on the northern shores of Lake Athabasca near the border of the Northwest Territories, it is 230 metres (750 ft) above sea level.

In 1949, athabascaite was discovered by S. Kaiman while he was researching radioactive materials around Lake Athabasca near Uranium City.

Not wanting to replicate some of the problems associated with small mining towns at the time in Northern Ontario, the government pushed for the second option and modelled Uranium City after the community of Arvida, Quebec.

The Uranium City Act was repealed on 1 October 1983, reducing the community to an unincorporated "northern settlement".

[8] The town is considered a uranium boomtown due to the rapid increase in population during the mining period and substantial depopulation that followed.

West Wind Aviation previously served Uranium City with flights to Prince Albert and Saskatoon three times a week.

[18][19] It now serves Uranium City with a flight from Saskatoon that stops in Prince Albert, Points North and Stony Rapids.

[29] This repeater was one of 620 analog television signals nationwide shut down by the CBC on 31 July 2012 due to budget cuts.

Uranium City is part of the Taiga Shield Ecozone and experiences a subarctic climate (Köppen Dfc) with long, cold, snowy winters, brief transitional periods, and short, cool, and humid summers.

According to travellers Vincent Chan and Tricia Holopina who visited the city in 2002, locals state that the school was opened in 1979 and closed in 1983 after only three years of service, with the building since sustaining extensive vandalism.