Valar Atomics breaks ground in Utah

El Segundo, Calif.-based reactor start-up Valar Atomics recently announced that it has broken ground on its test reactor, the Ward 250, at Utah San Rafael Energy Lab (USREL), becoming the second company participating in the Department of Energy's Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program to do so.

Their success follows that of Aalo Atomics, which in August announced that it had broken ground on its 10-MWe Aalo-X project at Idaho National Laboratory.

More details: A press release from the Utah Office of Energy Development (OED) details that the Ward 250 is a helium-cooled, TRISO-fueled, high-temperature gas reactor, which is consistent with previous reporting on Valar's reactor projects. While not directly stated in the press release, Valar founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor has indicated on X and elsewhere that the Ward 250 will be a 100-kWt reactor.

On Valar's website, the company's vision for the Ward is laid out in more detail. Its plan is to create one standardized reactor design to be manufactured at scale and deployed by the hundreds at a behind-the-meter "gigasite." Aiming to fulfill demand in industrial heat and energy, Valar is tailoring these plans toward hydrogen production, data centers, and synthetic fuel production.

The OED press release also highlights that Valar has chosen the Kiewit Corporation for engineering and construction work, Goree for architecture and design, and Sprung for the building.

Utah tie-in: USREL is located just outside of Orangeville, Utah, and is operated by the state, falling under the jurisdiction of the OED. Jeremy Pearson, a former ANS Congressional Fellow and former director of USREL explained to Nuclear Newswire the potential brought by Valar partnering with the lab, saying that USREL is an ideal location for a test reactor project because of strong community support and an existing energy workforce, with the lab being "flanked within minutes on either side by two gigawatt-scale coal power generating stations, as well as active coal mines."

Hoping to model similar success at INL, the OED aims to position USREL as "a hub for nuclear industrial heat pilots and demonstrations, to collect data which clears a pathway for licensing of these applications," Pearson added.

More broadly, Valar's entrance into Utah is part of the increasing nuclear momentum in the state, with Nusano, General Matter, and TerraPower all actively pursuing nuclear projects. This momentum has been facilitated by Gov. Spencer Cox's Operation Gigawatt, which seeks to double power production in the state within a decade.

AI and data center-driven demand has been a common talking point in Cox's explanation behind the need for Operation Gigawatt. However, in a video Cox posted to X, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources Joel Ferry highlighted that Valar's project "plays into the broader goal to create an energy ecosystem that will benefit the state of Utah for years to come."

Regulatory woes: Alongside Last Energy and Deep Fission, Valar is involved in the State of Texas et al. v. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which challenges the NRC's ability to license small modular reactors and microreactors.

In an interview in March, Taylor said, "Our regulatory environment is not formatted in a way that allows entrepreneurs like myself to quickly build a small reactor, test it out in the desert, and see if it works, and this is the only way advanced technology moves forward."

To avoid U.S. regulatory burdens, the company began working on deploying a test reactor in the Philippines. The details of this collaboration were further explained in an article on the website Power Philippines, which stated that Valar partnered with the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute to deploy a 100-kWt HTGR (assumedly the same design as the Ward 250) at an undisclosed location in the country.

Now, with the Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program presenting a path to operate outside of the typical NRC licensing framework, this project at USREL represents the company's return to the U.S.