Valar's only public safety paper for Ward 250 lists 4.95% (ordinary) uranium. Valar's own Los Alamos release a month later calls the same fuel HALEU, and DOE's shipping review cleared HALEU of up to 19.9% U-235 for use in Ward 250.
See both sides and the sources →The state lab's director told local readers that companies must show no dose at the site boundary in an accident and that the public would 'never see a dose of radiation above background'.
See both sides and the sources →DOE's statement that no major emission source lies within 10 miles is contradicted by the state's power-plant data, which place the Hunter coal plant about 6 miles away; the sentence sits in the air-quality section and does not change the…
See both sides and the sources →Valar's only public safety paper for Ward 250 lists 4.95% (ordinary) uranium. Valar's own Los Alamos release a month later calls the same fuel HALEU, and DOE's shipping review cleared HALEU of up to 19.9% U-235 for use in Ward 250.
See both sides and the sources →The state lab's page says Ward 250 achieved 'full-power' criticality on 18 June, which DOE's release and Valar's own page contradict: 18 June was a zero-power test.
See both sides and the sources →The home page states, in the present tense, that Valar's reactors paired with its sulfur-iodine process produce cheap, abundant hydrogen. It can be read as a description of design intent ('When paired with'), but no hydrogen production is…
See both sides and the sources →The public safety paper describes its design core: 76 elements of 4.95% fuel. DOE's shipping approval covers 24 elements of fuel up to 19.9% enriched under one letter amendment, and a Valar speaker says the core is 'very lightly loaded'…
See both sides and the sources →The safety paper allows 250 kW for one hour per run; an unfinished, unlisted Valar page from June 2026 says up to one day. Read as a total across runs, the two can fit; read as one continuous day, it is 24 times the paper's limit.
See both sides and the sources →The promise sits on a page that is unfinished and unlisted in Valar's library, so it may be a draft never meant to be read, which is a plausible innocent reading.
See both sides and the sources →Valar's 'first and only' claims about powering AI and a startup generating nuclear power cannot be tested: no measured output has been published. Valar's own description of the event is narrow ('directly powering an NVIDIA chip'); the…
See both sides and the sources →The state lab's director told local readers that companies must show no dose at the site boundary in an accident and that the public would 'never see a dose of radiation above background'.
See both sides and the sources →DOE's statement that no major emission source lies within 10 miles is contradicted by the state's power-plant data, which place the Hunter coal plant about 6 miles away; the sentence sits in the air-quality section and does not change the…
See both sides and the sources →Valar's public claim that holding its spent fuel for five minutes equals a CT scan concerned Ward One, a planned 100 kWt reactor with a planned lifetime under a month, and gave no cooling time.
See both sides and the sources →The accident inventory assumes 30 full-power days at 100 kW (3 MWd), matching every other Valar statement of the plan. One line of the same draft sets the burnup limit at 30 megawatt-days, ten times that, and its method statement calls for…
See both sides and the sources →In the draft, 650°C is the maximum outlet temperature (a safety limit tied to material limits) and the fuel's normal maximum; 750°C appears as a performance goal 'under normal operations' and as the temperature for a cautious vessel creep…
See both sides and the sources →The worst-case analysis in Valar's draft paper assumes no member of the public is closer than 400 m, which it calls 'the nearest point of public access'; no DOE document read sets 400 m as a required boundary, and DOE's approved analysis…
See both sides and the sources →Valar asked DOE to require only on-site emergency response and told DOE that state-DOE notification agreements and local drills would back it up. No DOE decision on the request, no state-DOE agreement, no emergency plan and no drill record…
See both sides and the sources →Valar's safety paper sets a minimum target of 72 hours with no operator action; DOE's categorical-exclusion review, under which no full environmental study was required, states that the passive system keeps fuel within limits indefinitely.
See both sides and the sources →Valar promised monitoring data and regular reports to state environmental agencies and an EPA air-emission evaluation. Three months into operation, none of it is public; the only other public document says no air permits are needed.
See both sides and the sources →Valar's safety paper credits Ward Zero tests for natural circulation and cavity cooling, and for filing its final safety analysis early. Valar has described the testing publicly only in summary.
See both sides and the sources →Valar tells local councils and investors it will make its own fuel, at the largest scale in the country. Those are future goals that cannot be tested yet; DOE's own selection of Valar for its fuel-line pilot supports that Valar is building…
See both sides and the sources →Where Ward 250's spent core will go, when, and who pays if Valar cannot, are not stated in any record read. The state permit Utah law requires to store it here in the meantime was not found.
See both sides and the sources →State officials describe Valar as closely supervised and diligent on safety. Under the safety agreement the state can observe but not direct DOE's oversight, and DOE puts reactor safety on the developer.
See both sides and the sources →Valar says the swap of DOE's worker-safety rule for OSHA standards during construction was approved through its DOE agreement, which is not public; its own paper says the formal exemption was still in process, pending a DOE rule revision…
See both sides and the sources →'Unmatched' is a comparison no record tests. On proliferation, the record points both ways: the fuel is HALEU, which an independent science group calls more attractive for weapons development than ordinary reactor fuel, but the same group…
See both sides and the sources →Valar's own papers say DOE alone, and its staff's 'license' and 'permits' refer to the DOE authorization, as its safety paper's 'License limit' does. The statements that do not match the record are the state's: the governor, as KUTV…
See both sides and the sources →Valar is in none of DOE's three announced HALEU allocation rounds, yet HALEU fuel for Ward 250 was cleared to ship from a federal site, most likely the NOVA fuel Valar says it provided.
See both sides and the sources →DOE confirmed Ward 250 was a DOE-authorized reactor when it went critical. DOE's Office of Environmental Management confirmed on 14 July 2026 that its staff took part in the federal readiness review for the four pilot reactors, naming Ward…
See both sides and the sources →Valar and DOE say the DOE route applies safety standards equivalent to the NRC's. The record shows a rewritten DOE rulebook; six substitutions Valar requested, three of which Valar says DOE approved, mostly standards used at NRC-licensed…
See both sides and the sources →In 2025 Valar was suing the NRC and saw no reason to engage it; Ward 250's safety paper rules out NRC licensing for that reactor. Valar's own later account (to The New Republic, February 2026) is that it will apply to the NRC 'Once we're…
See both sides and the sources →Valar promised openness about all its plans and describes an open-door policy. The public record shows the Carbon site mapped two days after that promise, noticed in April and July without Valar's name or any nuclear use, first tied to…
See both sides and the sources →At the first public hearing on the project, the state's lab director said nothing was being kept from anyone; the state's signed agreement with Valar, then a month old, made the arrangement confidential, required Valar's approval for…
See both sides and the sources →Valar's safety agreement commits to complying with state permits; the local utility's approved minutes record a staff report that Valar connected to the county sewer before authorization and had not sent its sewer plans to the state as…
See both sides and the sources →DOE's review describes one short test with no expansion and states the proposal was not split up to fit an exclusion; its own text says phases with their own decisions are not segmentation.
See both sides and the sources →Officials described the process as open and Valar as hiding nothing. Their words can fairly be read as praise of Valar's openness with the county and the board, which the record supports (the county worked with Valar from early on and…
See both sides and the sources →A lode claim asserts a discovered vein. The public mineral records for the area show only gravel, which cannot be claimed, and a gas obtained by lease. Most of the claimed quarter-sections are private surface, and the notice's survey tie…
See both sides and the sources →Valar describes its Green River application as a survey-access request it has dropped. BLM's public record still shows the case pending, titled for a reactor and data center; that title and a survey-access request are consistent (a survey…
See both sides and the sources →The reactor needs no cooling water, so that part of the claim holds, and Valar's 'waterless' wording refers to cooling. The site and campus plans do use water: Valar told Castle Dale about 10 acre-feet 'for industrial use', with no time…
See both sides and the sources →A state agency says Valar has bought the land; Valar itself said in mid-August that it was still waiting on clean title. Whether the sale closed between 20 August and 10 September is not shown by any record read.
See both sides and the sources →Valar's Series B post says electricity came 'just a week' after criticality; its own website dates the two 13 days apart (18 June and 1 July). The two other mismatches first recorded here have innocent explanations: the '14 days' page is…
See both sides and the sources →The safety, quality and environmental documents all treat Ward 250 as a one-time mission of about 12 months of operation followed by teardown, and use that short life to justify lighter requirements.
See both sides and the sources →In April 2025 Valar said it was 'building and testing' its first reactor in the Philippines. The record shows a real, continuing project: a partnership with the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, licensing begun (per Valar), a…
See both sides and the sources →In 2025 Emery County was told this was a small, one-year test, not a power plant. But that same year the local paper printed Valar's description of itself as building clusters of thousands of reactors, and reported a plan for a factory hub…
The evidence →The federal claim map tells you that a claim exists, its name and number, its type and roughly where it is (to about a 160-acre square). It does not tell you who owns it.
The evidence →Even a genuine miner cannot fence off a claim, build on it or keep people out without BLM's say-so, and cannot use it for non-mining purposes. If anyone uses claim markers to block a public road or keep people away for a non-mining…
The evidence →Small-scale digging on a claim can start after a notice to BLM that the public never gets to comment on. Larger mining needs an approved plan, and those are published for comment. No mining notice or plan exists in Carbon County at all.
The evidence →The rule does not by itself require public notice when a company files for public land. Public involvement comes mainly through BLM's environmental review and any public meetings BLM decides to hold, announced in the Federal Register…
The evidence →In May 2025 the governor described the state's cost as virtually nothing beyond space and infrastructure, describing the MOU as it then stood. The record shows that the space is a publicly funded lab whose use terms are not public, and…
See both sides and the sources →Valar's announced totals are not in any Valar filing; the seed round is $19 million or $18 million depending on the source; valuations come only from Bloomberg as relayed; rounds overlap by an unstated amount.
See both sides and the sources →The county voted to remove Valar's parcel from the port authority's tax-capture zone; the port authority's plan, adopted two days later, and its September statement still count it in.
See both sides and the sources →The memo says the parcel earns about $4,000 a year; the approved minutes say $4,000 a month. The meeting's transcript shows staff naming no period, so the minutes' 'per month' may be the minute-taker's addition and the memo's figure may be…
See both sides and the sources →The Series B 'first company ever' claim is contradicted by General Atomics' 1958 TRIGA reactor at its own site; the narrower claims DOE and Valar make elsewhere (first DOE-authorized reactor built outside a national lab; first…
See both sides and the sources →Valar told Carbon County it relocated from California, and told the state of about 40 full-time local residents and 275 future jobs. The record shows most of its openings and its registered place of work in California, and, in April, Valar…
See both sides and the sources →The two public safety documents name an owner, 'Valar Atomics Limited', that appears in no registry or federal record read; the DOE authorization and award name Valar Atomics Inc.
See both sides and the sources →This is who has put money into Valar or lent it money. Several of the best-known names come from the defense-technology world: the founders or top executives of Anduril and Palantir and a Lockheed Martin board member; the largest round was…
The evidence →A lode claim is lawful only after a vein is discovered; the only minerals on record near RW 453 are road gravel and carbon dioxide, which cannot be claimed, and the notice's survey tie points outside…
All records requests →About 63% of the claimed quarter-sections is private land, where a lode claim is valid only over federally reserved minerals and needs 30 days' certified-mail notice to the surface owner; federal law…
All records requests →The lease map is dated 9 April 2026, the public notices named neither Valar nor a nuclear use, the committee meetings that shaped the terms were not on the public notice site, and the board voted…
All records requests →The county agendas read did not name the site or the letter while commissioners told the state board they had worked with Valar 'since the beginning'; the county has kept a major prospect under a…
All records requests →By the officials' and Valar's own accounts they were in contact about Carbon County from 2024, while the public record named Valar for the site only in August 2026 (disc-029).
All records requests →No Valar permit request has reached the county; state law makes the county approve a conditional use if harms can be reasonably mitigated, and whether Carbon requires a hearing is set by its own…
All records requests →None for Valar's claim: Ward 250 is a research reactor under DOE, as Valar consistently says. The wording that does not hold is others': a Carbon commissioner called it a 'commercial reactor', and the state lab's page speaks of moving…
See both sides and the sources →None as worded: waste storage is barred on land under the lease. The limit: the written memo in the same public board packet lets Valar buy any portion it wants for interim spent-fuel storage before storing anything there, which the…
See both sides and the sources →None. The promised criticality came on 18 June 2026, ahead of the 4 July goal and of Valar's own 30 June target. What was achieved was a zero-power criticality; full power and electricity rest on Valar's account (disc-024, disc-025).
See both sides and the sources →None: 'cannot melt' matches DOE's own description of TRISO fuel. The limit of the claim is that 'cannot melt' does not mean 'cannot release radioactivity'; Valar's worst-case analysis assumes some particles fail and release gases, and a…
See both sides and the sources →None on cash: the record shows $0 in federal money, as DOE said. The public value of DOE's free review, the federal fuel route and the Los Alamos test is not stated anywhere.
See both sides and the sources →None as worded: no earlier C-17 reactor airlift was found. Broader 'first air transport of a reactor' framing in coverage does not hold, and the flight carried no fuel.
See both sides and the sources →None as worded: both time spans match the record. 'Record time' is true of the Utah site and the step from the Nevada test, not of the reactor hardware, which came from earlier work in California.
See both sides and the sources →None for Emery County: Valar went before local bodies often and opened its site. The claim does not extend to the Carbon County site (disc-029), and minutes are summaries, so how complete the answers were cannot be judged.
See both sides and the sources →None: the applicant's statement matches the state's fault map. Its 'low-seismicity zone' description was not tested.
See both sides and the sources →None: the state's production table supports the commissioner's statement. (The board chair's remark that this was the 'first year in history' with none does not hold: the table shows none since 2020.)
See both sides and the sources →