First baseline brief, built from every file in the research as of 29 September 2026. It tests the concern that Valar has not been honest about what it is doing or how: 56 claims were set beside the record. Ten are documented conflicts, two are unsupported, 34 are unresolved because the deciding documents are not public, and ten hold up. The sharpest conflicts: Valar's own papers describe two different fuels; a founder's claim about handling spent fuel, disputed as potentially deadly, is still posted, with no correction found; the Carbon County lease was noticed without Valar's name or the word nuclear; and the reactor's approved safety documents are not public. None of this shows intent or that the reactor is unsafe; it shows where the public cannot check. The full report and 47 ready-to-file records requests are in the Report and Open Questions tabs.

• safe-010 DOE shipping review: fuel for Ward 250 is HALEU (under 20%), not the 4.95% its safety agreement lists — The one safety paper the public can read describes ordinary 4.95% uranium; DOE's own shipping review cleared fuel up to 19.9% (HALEU) for Ward 250, and no corrected version of the paper was found (disc-001, dir-009). Fuel grade changes the reactor's physics and how closely the fuel must be guarded; only the non-public safety analysis shows which fuel DOE reviewed.
• safe-026 'CT scan' spent-fuel claim still on Valar's site; no supporting calculation or correction found there — Valar's founder wrote that holding the spent fuel from his planned reactor for five minutes equals a CT scan; engineers using his numbers, as two outlets reported, found a fatal dose in about 90 seconds or less. The sentence is still on Valar's site with no correction found, and since spring 2026 the page asks search engines not to list it (disc-014, orig-061).
• fld-002 Posted notice: Valar Atomics Inc located the 'RW 453' lode mining claim in Carbon County on Sept. 12, 2026 — The claim marker a resident found on a dirt road is Valar's: the 'RW 453' lode claim, two miles south of the leased site. A lode claim is lawful only after a vein is discovered, the only minerals on record nearby are road gravel and carbon dioxide, and the notice's survey tie points outside the section (disc-003). The county filing, due about 12 October, will say more.
• csite-032 The state's first public notice (RDCC, April 20, 2026) called it an industrial and power project; no nuclear, no name — The state's public notices for the Wellington lease (April, and again July) named neither Valar nor a nuclear use; Valar's name first appeared with the site on a state agenda on 10 August, and local news first reported the lease the day after the vote (disc-029, csite-018, mine-041). The lease was voted in public meetings; what the notices told Carbon residents is the gap.
• mine-013 Carbon commissioners signed a June 29 support letter; no Carbon County agenda from May to mid-Sept shows it or the site — Carbon's commissioners signed a support letter for the lease on 29 June 2026 that appears on no county agenda, and told the state board they had worked with Valar 'since the beginning' and it was 'not hiding anything' (disc-031, ppl-020). How the letter was approved is a records question.
• safe-014 Valar's draft accident math puts the nearest public access 400 m away; the host lab is 20.6 acres, too small to hold a 400 m radius — Valar's worst-case accident math assumes nobody from the public is closer than 400 m, which takes about 124 acres; the host lab is 20.6 acres, and no record says who keeps the public off the land around it, while residents were told 'the fence line is all the buffer zone needed' (disc-008).
• safe-016 Emergency planning: Valar asked to plan for on-site emergencies only; no public record shows DOE agreed — Valar asked DOE to require emergency planning inside its site only and cited state-DOE agreements and local drills as backup; no DOE decision, agreement, plan or drill record is public, and the State Fire Marshal declined to review the building's fire plans (disc-010, loc-018).
• safe-007 What DOE has made public about Ward 250 safety, and what it has not: no DSA, TSRs, SER or startup approval found — The documents that set what Ward 250 may do (final safety analysis, operating limits, DOE's safety evaluation, startup approval) are not public, and every approval date comes from Valar or officials relaying it (disc-022). None of this shows the reactor is unsafe; it shows the public cannot check that it is safe.
• safe-009 The accident analysis assumed 3 megawatt-days of fuel use; the same document's limit allows 30, ten times more — The accident inventory assumes 30 full-power days (3 megawatt-days) while one line of the same paper sets a 30 megawatt-day limit. A unit slip is the likeliest reading and the main dose contributor (iodine-131) would rise little, but only the non-public limits can confirm it (disc-005).
• plan-009 Valar's dates clash: 'full power June 21' in the state's lease memo, yet on June 22 it announced 10 kWt of 100 — The state lease memo the Trust Lands board voted on says Ward 250 reached full power on 21 June; on 22 June Valar announced 10 kW of its 100, and DOE has confirmed only a zero-power test. State documents repeat company performance claims as fact (disc-024).
• safe-031 A uranium fuel line is being set up beside Ward 250; no DOE safety authorization for it has been made public — A pilot uranium-processing line for TRISO fuel is being installed beside the reactor, and Valar told Orangeville it will be the largest US maker of this fuel; no DOE or state authorization for it is public (disc-017).
• gov-026 State lab's FAQ says 'the planned reactor' gets NRC licensing and NRC-tested operators; its working reactor has neither — The state lab's live FAQ, which names Valar, still tells residents the reactor gets NRC licensing and NRC-licensed operators; Ward 250 is authorized by DOE alone, as Valar's own papers say (disc-021).
• gov-011 The state's own MOU with Valar (May 16, 2025): non-binding, confidential, 'no publicity' without consent, DOE rules only — The state's May 2025 agreement with Valar made the arrangement confidential and barred publicity without Valar's consent, a month before the lab director told Emery residents 'We are not trying to keep anything from anyone' (disc-030). Similar clauses appear in the state's other nuclear agreements.
• csite-024 Utah approved up to $106.7M in tax credits for Valar in July 2026 (Emery County); the public agenda did not name it — Utah approved up to $106.7 million in post-performance tax credits for Valar on an agenda that did not name the company; the materials naming it were posted after the meeting (disc-035). The credit is paid only from new state revenue and requires a local incentive not yet found.
• safe-039 What holds up: DOE did authorize the reactor, the airlift was unfueled, DOE checked the fuel shipment, DOE rates TRISO fuel more resistant than ordinary fuel — What holds: DOE did authorize Ward 250 and confirmed its criticality before the 4 July goal; the reactor flew in without fuel; DOE's reviewers independently checked the fuel shipment; TRISO fuel is genuinely robust (DOE says the particles cannot melt); and Valar's no-fault claim for the Carbon parcel checks out (disc-044, disc-015, disc-048).

Ledger entries (disc-) are named in the text; each item links to its underlying fact. Counts are as of 29 September 2026 and change as records arrive. Key dates ahead: about 12 October 2026 (RW 453 must be recorded with the Carbon County Recorder), November 2026 (the Carbon County planning hearing its zoning administrator hopes to hold on rules for big 'contested' projects), 11 December 2026 (BLM recording deadline). Correction 2026-09-29 (wording review): absence of a correction stated as 'no correction found'.

Valar's April 7, 2025 post 'Valar Atomics is Suing the NRC' contains the claim that holding Ward One's spent fuel for five minutes gives the same exposure as a CAT scan (orig-017). Read 2026-09-29, the page carries a robots meta tag, 'noindex, nofollow', which asks search engines not to list it, and the site's page data marks it 'disableIndex: true'; no other Valar library post carries the tag. Internet Archive copies of the page from April 8, 2025 through March 23, 2026 have no such tag; copies from July 22 and August 25, 2026 have it. In every copy the claim's text is unchanged, and no correction or note has been added. The post is still listed in Valar's own library, so visitors to the site can still find it. The tag appeared some time after March 23, 2026. The record does not show who added it or why.

• Valar Atomics is Suing the NRC (Isaiah Taylor), live page read 2026-09-29 (Valar Atomics, 2025-04-07) primary company “holding the spent fuel from this system for five minutes”
• Same page as archived by the Internet Archive, 23 March 2026 (no robots tag) (Valar Atomics (archived copy, Internet Archive), 2026-03-23) primary company
• Same page as archived by the Internet Archive, 22 July 2026 (robots tag present) (Valar Atomics (archived copy, Internet Archive), 2026-07-22) primary company “noindex, nofollow”

The Carbon County Board of Commissioners' notices on the Utah Public Notice Website show regular meetings on the first and third Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. (3 and 17 June, 1 and 15 July, 19 August, 2 and 16 September 2026; the 5 August meeting was cancelled), at 751 E 100 N, Price. Wednesday 7 October 2026 is the first Wednesday of October; as of 29 September no notice or agenda for it was posted. The most recent agenda, for 16 September, was posted on 10 September, six days ahead; it had no Valar, nuclear or Section 16 item and listed no public-comment period. The day before, Tuesday 6 October, is the Planning Commission, whose agenda (posted 23 September) has one permit item, the Altigen technology park (no record links it to Valar), and an item 'Updates on Previous Items and Upcoming Projects' (dir-015). No Valar item has been found on any Carbon County agenda posted so far, and no county permit application by Valar was found (csite-012). The county's rules for 'highly contested industries' are at the drafting stage, with a hearing planned for November (csite-013); under Utah Code 17-79-803 an application is judged by the rules in effect when it is complete unless the county formally started changing them first (dir-014), and the Trust Lands memo describes a county conditional use permit with notice and a public hearing as part of the process for the lease (csite-015).

• Carbon County Board of Commissioners: notices (June to Sept 2026) (Utah Public Notice Website) primary government “Commission Meeting”
• Carbon County Commission Meeting, September 16, 2026 (notice and agenda, posted September 10) (Utah Public Notice Website, 2026-09-10) primary government
• Carbon County Planning Commission Regular Meeting, October 6, 2026 (notice and agenda) (Utah Public Notice Website, 2026-09-23) primary government “Updates on Previous Items and Upcoming Projects”

The Carbon County Planning Commission meets 6 October 2026 at 4:30 p.m. in the Commission Chambers, 751 E 100 N, Price (in person only per the notice). Its one permit item is a conditional use permit for 'a phased Technology Park and associated infrastructure located East of Wellington' on parcels 2A-1320-0000 and 2A-1656-0000 for Altigen JS, LLC and Duct Tape, LLC (csite-012). The application's vicinity map ('Project Jurassic Spark', Sept 2026) covers all of Section 36, T14S R11E and all of Section 2, T15S R11E, along U.S. 6. County parcel records list 2A-1320-0000 at 640 acres and 2A-1656-0000 at 600.74 acres, both assessor class 'Commercial' and neither in the state's government-owned parcel layer (privately owned); the county zoning map shows both in the Mining & Grazing zone (dir-013). In May the county agreed to begin holding a BLM gas-pipeline right-of-way for Altigen, whose stated plan is natural-gas power plants on private land east of Wellington (mine-050). The project lies about three miles southeast of Section 28 and about four miles from Section 16, which the state approved leasing to Valar. No record read links this project to Valar.

• Carbon County Planning Commission Regular Meeting, October 6, 2026 (notice and agenda) (Utah Public Notice Website, 2026-09-23) primary government “a phased Technology Park and associated infrastructure located East of Wellington”
• 2026-Altigen Region Map (Project Jurassic Spark CUP application, Exhibit A, vicinity map) (Altigen JS, LLC (via Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-09-28) primary filing
• Carbon County parcels (UGRC LIR): 2A-1320-0000 and 2A-1656-0000 (Utah Geospatial Resource Center / Carbon County Assessor, 2025-11-26) primary government

Mining-claim markers stand in Carbon County. The Notice of Location posted at one of them (fld-002) names Valar Atomics Inc as locator of the RW 453 lode claim in Section 28, Township 14 South, Range 11 East, about 3.4 miles northeast of central Wellington, measured to the section's centre (BLM survey grid, dir-002).

• Field observation (September 2026) (resident, 2026-09) resident fieldwork

No public record read shows a settlement of Texas et al. v. NRC. (1) The NRC General Counsel listed the case as active and in abeyance as of 27 January 2026 (dir-018). (2) Utah's Attorney General described it in January 2026 as stayed while the NRC considers rule revisions and exemptions (dir-019). (3) The NRC's May 2026 proposed Part 57 rule keeps the 'utilization facility' definition the suit attacks (dir-020). No final rule and no Federal Register notice about a settlement were found, and none of the NRC's 2026 Commission orders (CLI-26-1 to CLI-26-12) concerns the case. (4) The latest docket entry seen, in a commercial copy of the docket, is a joint status report of 2 September 2026, with no dismissal, stipulation or consent decree shown (dir-022). (5) Press in May 2026 reported only that the NRC had been willing to settle (dir-021). A settlement agreed but not yet filed cannot be ruled out from public records, and its terms, if any, are unknown. Ward 250 runs under DOE authorization either way (safe-028). (Updates safe-028.)

• Litigation Status Report (As of January 27, 2026), enclosure to SECY-26-0013 (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of the General Counsel, 2026-01-27) primary government “The court has not yet acted on the request”
• Office of the Utah Attorney General 2025 Annual Report (Office of the Utah Attorney General, 2026-01-22) primary government “The case is currently stayed”
• Licensing Requirements for Microreactors and Other Reactors With Comparable Risk Profiles (proposed rule) (Federal Register (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), 2026-05-01) primary government “any nuclear reactor would meet both prongs and constitute a utilization facility”
• State of Texas et al v. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (6:24-cv-00507) (PacerMonitor (copy of PACER docket)) court docket aggregator “JOINT STATUS REPORT by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission”
• Commission Orders for 2026 (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) primary government

As of 29 September 2026: the Trust Lands board voted unanimously on 17 September 2026 to approve an 'Other Business Arrangement' with Valar Atomics on Section 16, T14S R11E, about five miles north of Wellington: 480 acres now, the other 160 if a National Guard lease is moved, 50 years plus two 25-year extensions, with an option to buy (csite-002, csite-004, mine-011). The stated purpose is an integrated nuclear energy, advanced manufacturing, critical mineral refining and data center campus: high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, TRISO fuel manufacturing, hydrogen and synthetic fuels, desalination and steel (csite-007). Separately, a posted Notice of Location names Valar Atomics Inc as locator of the 'RW 453' lode mining claim in Section 28, two miles south, located 12 September 2026; it is not yet in BLM's public claim layer, which the 90-day recording window allows (csite-019, fld-002, dir-005). No county permit application, state DEQ permit or DOE/NEPA document for the Carbon site was found (csite-012, csite-020, csite-023). Whether any NRC filing exists could not be checked, because NRC's site refused our reader (csite-022), and water-right filings could not be searched (mine-017). The only approvals of record are the board's vote and the commissioners' 29 June support letter, which appears on no public county agenda (mine-013, csite-026). No departure from the notice rules read was found (csite-005, csite-016, csite-018), but the first public document naming Valar for the site was posted on 10 August 2026, and the April state review notice did not say nuclear (csite-032). Open conflicts: waste-storage framing (csite-008), the NRC route vs the CEO's 2025 stance (csite-022), a one-test NEPA review vs a larger build-out (csite-021), 'openness' vs the paper trail (csite-028), and a lode claim with no mineral stated (csite-019, disc-003).

• 09.17.2026 TLA Board Packet (Item 10A: SULA 2095-OBA Board of Trustees Memorandum, Carbon County letter, lease map) (Utah Trust Lands Administration (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-09-17) primary government “The OBA agreement secures the subject property as a potential location for the facilities”
• 09.17.2026 TLA Board of Trustees Meeting Audio Transcript (auto-generated) (Utah Trust Lands Administration (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-09-23) primary government “move to approve. Sula 2095 OBA on the terms set forth in the board memorandum”
• Photo of the Notice of Location posted at the RW 453 location monument (resident fieldwork, 2026-09) resident fieldwork “Valar Atomics Inc”

The Planning Commission's notices on the Utah Public Notice Website from 5 May to 6 October 2026 (eleven in the website's notice list; the body page itself shows ten) list rezones, subdivisions and routine hearings, and no item for Valar, a reactor, Section 16 or the Wellington trust-land parcel. The June and August 2026 minutes (scanned; read by OCR) do not mention Valar. The agenda for 6 October 2026 (posted 23 September) has one land-use item: possible approval of a conditional use permit for 'a phased Technology Park and associated infrastructure located East of Wellington' on two parcels for Altigen JS, LLC and Duct Tape, LLC, with an attached 'Project Jurassic Spark' region map (added 28 September); Altigen's gas pipeline was before the County Commission in May (mine-050). The October notice says it was sent to a local newspaper, radio stations KOAL and KUSA, ETV Channel 10 and the state website. As of 29 September 2026 no Valar conditional use application, site plan or rezone appears in these records.

• Carbon County Planning Commission: notices (May 5 to Oct 6, 2026) (Utah Public Notice Website) primary government
• Carbon County Planning Commission Regular Meeting, October 6, 2026 (notice, agenda, Altigen region map) (Carbon County Planning Commission (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-10-06) primary government “a phased Technology Park and associated infrastructure located East of Wellington”
• 2026-08-04 AUG MINUTES-SIGNED (Carbon County Planning Commission; scanned, read by OCR) (Carbon County Planning Commission (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-08-04) primary government

Read on 29 September 2026: Valar's home, Ward 250, Technology, Mission, Careers and Castle Country pages; its Library page (five company posts plus media links); and the Ward 250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement and QA Program Description in its 'Public Documents' folder. None mentions Wellington, the Trust Lands lease, Section 16 or a Carbon County campus; on the Castle Country page 'Carbon' appears in its 'Carbon & Emery County' headings and history and as a partner logo (extends mine-020). The company does state its general plan there: 'Valar Atomics is building America's first nuclear gigasites', which it describes as energy campuses powered by fleets of reactors, without naming a location. The same page says 'Our doors remain open through tours, town halls and straight answers.' The only Valar statements about the Carbon site found are its staff's remarks to the Trust Lands board (mine-018, mine-033) and to the Carbon County Commission, whose 19 August minutes do not name the site (mine-013).

• Castle Country | Valar Atomics (Valar Atomics) primary company “Our doors remain open through tours, town halls and straight answers.”
• Library | Valar Atomics (Valar Atomics) primary company
• Ward250 San Rafael Facility Quality Assurance Program Description (Document 100474, Rev. 02) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement (Document 100403, Rev. 02) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company
• Castle Country | Valar Atomics (Valar Atomics) primary company “Valar Atomics is building America's first nuclear gigasites”

The Utah Inland Port Authority's Castle Country Project Area (adopted 24 June 2024, amended 6 January 2025) lets UIPA use property-tax incentives in parts of Carbon and Emery counties, Wellington and Green River; UIPA says its second amendment adds 2,383 acres in Carbon County tied to Tyr Energy power projects, Wildcat Rail and land next to the Savage rail terminal, for about 15,323 acres in all. UIPA's public 'Project Areas' map layer (last edited 16 September 2026) returns no project area at the centre or corners of Section 16. UIPA's 10 September update says Valar's roughly 100 acres beside the Emery lab lie inside the project area (mine-018). The state tax credit approved in July is for Emery County (csite-024). No UIPA, state or county incentive for the Carbon County campus was found as of 29 September 2026.

• UIPA advances Castle Country amendment in Carbon County (Utah Inland Port Authority) primary government “land tied to Tyr Energy power projects, Wildcat Rail Expansion”
• UIPA Approves Amendment to Castle Country Project Area (Utah Inland Port Authority, 2025-01-06) primary government
• Project Areas (Utah Inland Port Authority feature layer; point queries) (Utah Inland Port Authority) primary government
• Castle Country Project Area Builds Momentum Across Energy, Critical Minerals and Logistics (Utah Inland Port Authority, 2026-09-10) primary government

Agendas on the Utah Public Notice Website and legislative materials read on 29 September 2026: the Legislature's Public Utilities, Energy & Technology Interim Committee heard 'Valar Atomics Nuclear Test Reactor' on 18 June 2025 (its agenda describes a plan for 'a new nuclear test reactor running by 2026', and the approved minutes record public comment on the nuclear discussion later in that meeting; gov-040); slides for the Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Interim Committee's 19 August 2026 data-center item list the 'Valar Atomics-Nvidia Partnership' as an example; the Utah Energy Council's 31 March 2026 agenda has 'Valar Atomics at San Rafael Lab Update', with a general public-comment item next on the agenda (gov-041; 13 of its agendas from October 2025 to September 2026 also list closed sessions on buying, exchanging or leasing real property, unnamed); the Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments (SERDA) board agendas list 'Valar Atomics Groundbreaking' (September 2025) and 'Nuclear Community Campaigns' updates (May and July 2026); the Utah Nuclear Consortium's 25 March 2026 agenda discusses its new duties under S.B. 135 and H.B. 78. None of these agendas or the attachments read names the Wellington parcel, Section 16 or a Carbon County campus. The Carbon Community Economic Development Board's 15 notices since June 2025 have no Valar item, and the Carbon County Redevelopment Agency's four notices (September to December 2025) have none. Minutes and audio were not available or not transcribed for most of these meetings. The Energy Council's approved 7 July 2026 minutes, the transcript of its 25 August 2026 meeting and its 29 September 2026 agenda were also read: none names Valar or a Carbon site.

• Public Utilities, Energy, & Technology Interim Committee agenda (June 2025) (Utah State Legislature, 2025-06-18) primary government “Valar Atomics Nuclear Test Reactor”
• Data Centers (slides heard in the Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Interim Committee, 8/19/2026) (Utah State Legislature (committee materials), 2026-08-19) primary government “Valar Atomics-Nvidia Partnership”
• Utah Energy Council agenda, March 31, 2026 (Utah Energy Council (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-03-31) primary government “Valar Atomics at San Rafael Lab Update”
• SERDA / SEUALG Board Meeting, July 16, 2026 (notice) (Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-07-16) primary government “UPDATE: Nuclear Community Campaigns”
• Utah Nuclear Consortium Meeting, March 25, 2026 (notice) (Utah Public Notice Website, 2026-03-25) primary government “Discussion of new duties under H.B. 78 - Nuclear Regulatory Amendments”
• SEUALG / SERDA Board Meeting, September 25, 2025 (notice) (Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments (Utah Public Notice Website), 2025-09-25) primary government “INFORMATION: Valar Atomics Groundbreaking”
• Utah Energy Council Recurring Monthly Meeting, 2026-08-25, Transcript (Utah Energy Council (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-08-25) primary government

BLM's survey grid places Section 28, T14S R11E SLM at 39.572-39.586 N, 110.683-110.702 W, directly two miles south of Section 16 (the land the state approved leasing to Valar) and about 3.4 miles northeast of central Wellington. Carbon County's parcel records (compiled statewide by UGRC; parcel shapes current as of 26 November 2025, ownership layer of 18 June 2026) show one federal parcel, 2A-1292-028F (200 acres, recorded as held by the 'United States of America'), in four pieces: about 80 acres in the NE quarter and about 40 acres in each other quarter. Everything else is private. Laying the parcel shapes over the section on a fine grid, the north half (the NW and NE quarters, 320 acres, where the notice places RW 453) is about 119 acres federal (37%), about 100 acres in 17 parcels the county assessor classes as 'Single Family' (residential), and about 93 acres in parcels classed 'Commercial'. The assessor layer does not record whether a house stands on each parcel. BLM's generalized surface-management layer marks the whole section 'Private or Unknown'; the parcel records are the finer source. A lode claim is valid only over federally owned minerals: on the federal pieces if the land is open to mineral entry, and on private surface only where the United States kept the minerals, where Stock-Raising Homestead Act rules require certified-mail notice to the surface owner 30 days before entry (43 CFR 3838.11). Who owns the minerals under the private parcels is not shown in the layers read, and because the notice's survey tie points outside the section (dir-001), where exactly the claim lies within the north half cannot be told from the notice.

• Utah government-owned parcels (UGRC; source Carbon County, 2026-06-18): parcel 2A-1292-028F, four polygons (Utah Geospatial Resource Center / Carbon County, 2026-06-18) primary government “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”
• Carbon County parcels (UGRC LIR, current as of 2025-11-26): all parcels intersecting Section 28, with property class (Utah Geospatial Resource Center / Carbon County Assessor, 2025-11-26) primary government
• BLM PLSS CadNSDI, first division UT260140S0110E0SN280 (Section 28) (Bureau of Land Management) primary government

Utah's mineral occurrence records (the USGS / Utah Geological and Mineral Survey records compiled by UGRC) list six occurrences within about 6 km of Section 28: all are sand-and-gravel pits in pediment gravels (Utah Department of Highways pits 04024, 04025 and 04026 northeast of the Wellington rodeo ground, the Wellington NE and NW gravel pits, and the Soldier Creek upper gravel pits), described as road metal, riprap and aggregate. The CRIB mineral-location layer adds one carbon dioxide occurrence. Federal law says no deposit of common varieties of sand, stone or gravel is a valuable mineral deposit under the mining laws unless it has a distinct and special value (30 U.S.C. 611), and carbon dioxide is obtained by lease, not by claim. No vein or lode deposit of a locatable mineral is on record there in these databases. A lode claim requires a vein or lode discovered within it (Utah Code 40-1-1; dir-004). Absence from these databases does not prove no mineral exists.

• Utah mineral occurrence records (UGRC 'Minerals'; USGS/UGMS records) within about 6 km of Section 28 (Utah Geospatial Resource Center (USGS / Utah Geological and Mineral Survey records)) primary government
• Utah mineral locations (CRIB) within about 6 km of Section 28 (Utah Geospatial Resource Center) primary government
• 30 U.S.C. 611 (common varieties not valuable mineral deposits) (Legal Information Institute (Cornell), text of the U.S. Code) primary government “No deposit of common varieties of sand, stone, gravel”

Every claim in BLM's not-closed mining-claim layer that intersects Carbon County was pulled on 2026-09-29: ten open claims (AMBERIA 1-9 in T14S R9E, BLACK RIFLE placer in T15S R11E), none RW and none naming Valar (mine-002). A second check the same day, by legal description, found no claim, open or closed, anywhere in T14S R11E (the township of both the lease and RW 453), and no Utah claim named RW among the 134 Utah claims BLM created from September 12 to September 29. Federal rules require recording with BLM by the 90th day after location (43 CFR 3833.11), so RW 453 (located Sept 12, 2026) is due by December 11, 2026 and may simply not be filed yet.

• BLM National MLRS Mining Claims layers (not closed and closed), Carbon County and T14S R11E queries of 2026-09-29 (Bureau of Land Management, 2026-09-29) primary filing
• 43 CFR 3833.11 (Legal Information Institute (Cornell)) primary government “by the 90th day after the date of location”

Valar publishes one version of the Ward 250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement (No. 100403, Revision 02, dated October 2025). The Internet Archive holds seven captures of that PDF (7 November 2025; 1 January, 3 March, 5 July, 6 July, 6 August and 18 September 2026); with the live file Valar Watch fetched on 29 September 2026, all eight are byte-identical (the same SHA-256), and each carries the fuel line 'Fuel Enrichment 4.95% U-235 LEU limits'. So the public copy was not revised after DOE's packaging review approved shipping HALEU fuel to Ward 250 (20 May 2026, safe-010) or after the reactor's first criticality (18 June 2026, orig-010). The agreement itself says that if the fuel differs from its specification, the safety assumptions will be updated in the later Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis, of which no public copy was found (safe-007); an updated analysis may exist. The companion Quality Assurance Program Description (No. 100474, Revision 02) is likewise unchanged across its six copies.

• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403 Rev 02: Internet Archive copy of 7 Nov 2025 (Valar Atomics (via Internet Archive), 2025-10) primary company “Fuel Enrichment 4.95% U-235 LEU limits”
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403 Rev 02: Internet Archive copy of 18 Sept 2026 (Valar Atomics (via Internet Archive), 2025-10) primary company “Fuel Enrichment 4.95% U-235 LEU limits”
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403 Rev 02 (live file, fetched 29 Sept 2026) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company

Valar posted its Ward 250 safety agreement (NSDA) and Quality Assurance Program Description on its website on 13 October 2025, each on its own page linking the PDF (orig-071). Valar Watch compared every saved copy of Valar's library page (valaratomics.com/docs): Internet Archive captures of 16 October and 7 and 19 November 2025, and 5 July, 6 August and 25 August 2026, and the live page on 29 September 2026. In none is either safety-paper page among the library's listed posts; the library lists the NRC-lawsuit post, the Project NOVA release and Valar's other announcements. So since they went up, the only safety papers Valar publishes have been reachable only by a direct link (for example from the Ward 250 page's data or from outside reporting), not by browsing Valar's library. The record does not show why they were left unlisted.

• valaratomics.com/docs, Internet Archive captures Oct 2025 to Aug 2026 (Internet Archive (Wayback Machine)) primary company
• Docs (Valar Atomics library), live page read 29 Sept 2026 (Valar Atomics) primary company
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement (Valar library page, unlisted) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10-13) primary company

Carbon County's own zoning map service (the county's 'County Zoning' layer, queried 29 September 2026 at the center of each area) shows: Section 16, T14S R11E, Valar's Wellington lease, zoned M&G, 'Mining and Grazing Zone' (matching the Trust Lands memo, csite-015); the NW quarter of Section 28, where the RW 453 notice places the claim, zoned RR-1, 'One-acre Rural Residential Zone', and the NE quarter zoned RR-2.5, 'Two-and-one-half-acre Rural Residential Zone' (the notice names both quarters, fld-002); and both parcels of the 'Jurassic Spark' technology park on the 6 October Planning Commission agenda, Section 36 T14S R11E and Section 2 T15S R11E, zoned M&G (dir-015). County zoning does not govern land the United States owns (Utah Code 17-79-306), and about 37% of Section 28's north half is a federal parcel (dir-002); the rest is private land under the county's zoning. What the county's residential zones allow is set by Carbon's development code, which sits on a county site that refuses our reader.

• Carbon County GIS, CountyGeneralMap/Zoning, layer 3 'County Zoning' (point queries, 29 Sept 2026) (Carbon County) primary government “One-acre Rural Residential Zone”

Utah Code 17-79-306(2) (amended 2026) says that, unless otherwise provided by law, the county land-use chapter does not give a county jurisdiction over real property 'owned by the state or the United States'. Valar's Wellington parcel is state school trust land; the Trust Lands statute (Title 53C) has no zoning provision, yet the Trust Lands memo describes the county conditional use permit as part of the process (csite-015); the executed lease, not yet public, would show whether Valar agreed to seek county approvals. Separately, Utah Code 17-79-803 (the version effective 6 Nov 2025; amended May 2026) entitles an applicant to review under the land-use rules in effect when a complete application is filed, unless the county, before the filing, formally initiated proceedings to amend its rules in a way that would bar it (that protection lapses after 180 days if no enactment results). Carbon County's planners are drafting rules for 'highly contested industries', with a hearing planned for November (csite-013).

• Utah Code 17-79-803 Applicant's entitlement to land use application approval (version eff. 11/6/2025) (Utah State Legislature, 2025-11-06) primary government “in effect on the date that the application is complete”
• Utah Code 17-79 Part 3 (17-79-306 State and federal property, amended 2026) (Utah State Legislature, 2026) primary government “owned by the state or the United States”
• Utah Code Title 53C, School and Institutional Trust Lands Management Act (searched for zoning provisions) (Utah State Legislature) primary government

Holds: DOE's rule that pilot companies get no federal money matches the spending record ($0, fund-011); the $1 billion Series B is confirmed by Valar and its counsel, and Sequoia's portfolio page lists Valar (fund-007); the July 4, 2026 criticality goal given to investors and the public was met (fund-020). Where claims and record part: the seed round is $19M in the press and $18M on a participating investor's own blog (fund-003); every valuation ($2B, $6B) comes from Bloomberg as relayed by others, never from Valar (fund-006, fund-007); round totals overlap, so the equity raised is a range, about $1.15-1.5B (fund-008, fund-023); the February 2025 seed coverage cited a Philippine reactor contract, and no reactor there was on record as of the latest report read (April 2026; fund-003, fund-020); an investor quoted in an investor-published profile projected $1B a year of revenue per 100 reactors, and no revenue or customer contract is on record (fund-019). On incentives: in April 2026 an Emery commissioner said Valar had 'not even asked' the county for a tax incentive; in July the state approved up to $106.7M, which still needs a local incentive that had not been found (gov-033, fund-017). Not public: any Form D by Valar for any round (fund-010); the lender and terms of the reported $110M of debt, and the terms of the $200M facility (fund-006, fund-009); how that lending was handled given that the OCC's 2025 approval letter for Erebor Bank, which leads the facility, lists Valar backer Palmer Luckey as a director and principal shareholder, a tie neither announcement mentions (fund-009); the value of federal help in kind (DOE review at no charge, HALEU fuel shipped from a federal site with ownership not public, a Los Alamos test, a possible Price-Anderson indemnity; fund-011 to fund-014); the terms of Valar's use of the public lab (fund-015); and any money set aside to decommission Ward 250, whose safety agreement marks the 'Financial Qualifications' chapter 'Not required for application' (fund-018). Carbon County: no incentive found; the approved Trust Lands lease terms call for a $400,000 bonus and yearly rent (fund-016).

• Announcing our $1B Series B Led By Sequoia (Isaiah Taylor) (Valar Atomics, 2026-08-04) primary company “the closing of a $1 billion Series B financing led by Sequoia Capital”
• USAspending award search, recipient 'VALAR ATOMICS', every award-type group (contracts, IDVs, grants, loans, direct payments, other), FY2008 to Sept 30, 2026 (run 2026-09-29; one result, $0) (USAspending.gov (U.S. Department of the Treasury)) primary government
• EDGAR company search: 'valar atomics' (7 registrants, all investment-pool series; no Valar Atomics Inc.) (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) primary filing
• GOED Public Board Materials, July 9, 2026: GOED Board Executive Summary, Valar Atomics Inc. (Board of the Governor's Office of Economic Development (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-07-09) primary government “Incentives are site specific and subject to local incentive participation.”
• Conditional Approval Letter: Application to Charter Erebor Bank, National Association, Columbus, Ohio (OCC Control No. 2025-Charter-342076) (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, 2025-10-15) primary government “Palmer Luckey Director, Principal Shareholder”

EDGAR, the SEC's filing system, has no registrant named Valar Atomics, Inc.: its company search for 'valar atomics' returns seven series of CGF2021 LLC (investment pools administered by Sydecar, orig-056) and nothing else, and a full-text search of all filings for 'Valar Atomics' (31 hits, re-run 29 Sept 2026) finds Form D notices only from nine such pools (ten filings: eight CGF2021 series and one Alumni Ventures fund), plus lenders' and other companies' reports that mention Valar. So none of the rounds in fund-002 to fund-007, including the $1 billion Series B, has a Form D from the company. The SEC's guidance says a company selling under Rule 504 or 506 of Regulation D 'must file this notice within 15 days after the first sale of securities'. The SEC's pages describe Rule 506(b) as a 'safe harbor' under Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act, which exempts sales 'not involving any public offering', and tie the Form D notice to the Regulation D rules; they do not say that every private sale needs one. Which exemption Valar used is not public. The Form D itself asks for each executive officer, director and promoter (Item 3) and the amount sold (Item 13); its absence is why Valar's board and round totals are known only from press and investors (fund-002, fund-008, ppl-010). This is a gap in the public record and nothing more.

• EDGAR company search: 'valar atomics' (7 registrants, all investment-pool series; no Valar Atomics Inc.) (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) primary filing
• EDGAR full-text search: "Valar Atomics", all forms (31 hits) (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) primary filing
• EDGAR full-text search: "Valar Atomics", Form D (10 filings, 9 entities, none by Valar Atomics Inc.) (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) primary filing
• Filing a Form D notice (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) primary government “must file this notice within 15 days after the first sale of securities”
• Exempt offerings (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) primary government
• Private Placements - Rule 506(b) (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) primary government “exempts from registration transactions by an issuer not involving any public offering”
• Form D, Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities (form and instructions; Item 3 Related Persons, Item 13 Offering and Sales Amounts) (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) primary government “Each executive officer and director of the issuer”

The claim that holds: DOE's pilot program gives companies no money, and the federal spending database agrees. USAspending (re-queried 29 Sept 2026 across every award type: contracts, IDVs, grants, loans, direct payments, other) shows one award to Valar Atomics Inc., DOE Other Transaction Agreement DENE0009560, obligating $0 (orig-055, gov-003). No Defense Department award to Valar appears there (gov-027); DOE's Launch Pad gives no funding (gov-010); the Defense Production Act fuel pact 'does not confer funds' (gov-001); the fuel-line selection is at Valar's own cost (orig-032). What the $0 does not count is help in kind, which Valar's founder described himself: the program 'gives us access to sites, national lab expertise, and federal oversight' (his statement to Wired, as quoted by ANS). (1) DOE bears its own costs of reviewing Valar's safety documents, per the program's request for applications as summarized by Hogan Lovells, whereas NRC applicants pay the NRC hourly fees (gov-032); (2) Ward 250's HALEU fuel was shipped from a federal criticality center in Nevada, with no public record of who owns the uranium or on what terms (gov-008); (3) Los Alamos supplied the critical assembly, staff and oversight for the NOVA test, at a center funded and managed by NNSA (fund-012); (4) Air Force C-17s flew the unfueled reactor to Utah, reportedly at Valar's expense (fund-013); (5) DOE has said pilot reactors count as DOE reactors under the federal nuclear-accident indemnity (fund-014). None of these has a published dollar value. Valar also spends in Washington: $70,000 of federal lobbying through June 2026, on nuclear policy and the budget bill that funds DOE, with only Congress listed as contacted (gov-004).

• USAspending award ASST_NON_DENE0009560_089 (API record, re-read 2026-09-29) (USAspending.gov (U.S. Department of the Treasury), 2026-05-19) primary government “VALAR OTHER TRANSACTION AGREEMENT (OTA) FOR DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE) REACTOR PILOT PROGRAM”
• USAspending award search, recipient 'VALAR ATOMICS', every award-type group (contracts, IDVs, grants, loans, direct payments, other), FY2008 to Sept 30, 2026 (run 2026-09-29; one result, $0) (USAspending.gov (U.S. Department of the Treasury)) primary government
• DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy issues Request for Application for Reactor Pilot Program (Daniel Stenger, Stewart Forbes, Valerie Marshall) (Hogan Lovells, 2025-07-01) analysis “Applicants will not be responsible for DOE costs incurred reviewing documents”
• Valar achieves cold criticality at LANL (American Nuclear Society, Nuclear Newswire, 2025-11-18) news “gives us access to sites, national lab expertise, and federal oversight”

What the state and counties have offered or given (as of 29 Sept 2026): a REDTIF post-performance refundable tax credit of up to $106,737,499 over 10 years, approved 9 July 2026 and not yet earned (fund-017, csite-024); use of the state-owned San Rafael lab and its shared facilities, terms not public (fund-015, gov-011); Emery County's direct sale of the 112.7-acre lab-side parcel at its appraised $394,500, without competitive bidding (gov-022); that parcel's placement in an Inland Port tax zone, whose status the county and the port authority record differently (gov-018, gov-023); and the Trust Lands 50-year Carbon County lease (480 acres at first, up to 640) with a purchase option, approved 17 Sept 2026 (mine-011, csite-004); no tax incentive for the Carbon campus was found (csite-029). No state or county cash grant to Valar was found in the board, county and legislative records read (state vendor-payment data on Transparent Utah was not searched; open question). What Valar pays or has promised to pay public bodies: $394,500 for the Emery parcel (gov-022); a $400,000 bonus plus rent of $30 an acre a year rising to $625 by year 8 on the Carbon lease, which staff estimated at about $35 million over 50 years (mine-011); a $20,000 outside-district water connection approved for Valar by a local district (loc-015, loc-017); and the proposed $20 million supercritical-CO2 test heater it would fund and hand to the state lab, of which only a $400,000 design phase was approved (gov-014). The known one-time amounts come to about $815,000 ($394,500 + $400,000 + $20,000); first-year rent on 480 acres at $30 an acre would be about $14,400. Utah's Legislature separately spent public money on the lab before Valar came (fund-015). What Valar pays in taxes was not found in public records; the tax credit application projects $213,474,999 of new state revenue over 10 years (fund-017), a projection in the application, not revenue earned.

• GOED Public Board Materials, July 9, 2026: GOED Board Executive Summary, Valar Atomics Inc. (Board of the Governor's Office of Economic Development (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-07-09) primary government “Incentives are site specific and subject to local incentive participation.”

What investors and the public were told: Contrary Research, itself an investor, published a November 2025 profile quoting an unnamed Valar investor who said Valar could produce about '$1 billion of revenue annually per 100 reactors' on a gigasite from synthetic-fuel sales, and $10 billion or more a year from a 1,000-reactor gigasite; Contrary adds that the company believes it can make synthetic fuels at prices matching or beating fossil fuels without carbon subsidies, while its own risk list calls synthetic-fuel economics and mass reactor production unproven (orig-024). Valar's homepage says its 'products create the cashflow' to drive manufacturing, and Sequoia's page says Valar 'sells power rather than reactors'. The state tax-credit file describes gigasites powering data centers, hydrogen and synthetic fuels (fund-017). What the record shows as of 29 Sept 2026: no revenue figure, customer contract or power-purchase agreement has been published by Valar or any buyer; the Series B post (Aug 2026) names investors, lenders and a 'collaboration' with NVIDIA, but no customer; the NVIDIA announcement of 1 July 2026 was, as reported by the Deseret News, a collaboration to 'explore' a 30 MW data center, with no money or timeline stated (orig-042); at the state board in July, a Valar executive said no one has yet sold power from an advanced reactor in America and that its near-term plan is premium 'behind-the-meter' customers (gov-033); Sacra, a research firm, says Valar 'needs an anchor customer'. DOE's legal basis for Ward 250 is that it does not produce commercial power (safe-030), and the Deseret News notes that the NRC must license Valar's reactor before it can generate power commercially, so Ward 250 is not a source of power sales. No hydrogen or synthetic fuel production is on record (orig-063). The public emphasis has shifted toward AI power (Series B post, NVIDIA event), though the homepage still leads with industrial power and hydrocarbon fuels (orig-063).

• Report: Valar Atomics Business Breakdown & Founding Story (Contrary Research (an investor in Valar), 2025-11-11) analysis “~$1 billion of revenue annually per 100 reactors deployed on a gigasite”
• Valar Atomics (homepage) (Valar Atomics) primary company “Our high volume, grid-independent products create the cashflow to drive manufacturing excellence and operational scale.”
• Announcing our $1B Series B Led By Sequoia (Isaiah Taylor) (Valar Atomics, 2026-08-04) primary company “a collaboration on a waterless 30 MW AI factory”
• New partnership touts nuclear-powered AI with minimal water use (Eva Terry, Deseret News) (KSL.com / Deseret News, 2026-07-06) news “announced a collaboration with Nvidia on Wednesday afternoon to explore the development”
• Valar Atomics funding, news & analysis (Sacra (research firm; partly paywalled)) analysis “Valar needs an anchor customer to validate its model in this segment.”
• GOED Public Board Materials, July 9, 2026: GOED Board Executive Summary, Valar Atomics Inc. (Board of the Governor's Office of Economic Development (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-07-09) primary government “Incentives are site specific and subject to local incentive participation.”
• Valar Atomics (portfolio page) (Sequoia Capital) primary company “sells power rather than reactors”

Holds: DOE's July 2026 target and Valar's own October 2025 milestone table ('Initial Criticality 06/30/2026') were met when Ward 250 went critical on 18 June 2026 (orig-010); Valar's homepage promise to 'go live before America's 250th birthday on July 4th, 2026' is met for criticality. Partly: tech press in November 2025 carried the company's line that it was 'on track to demonstrate 100 kilowatts of thermal energy by July 4'; Valar says it reached full power within days, but DOE confirmed only zero-power criticality and no independent record of the power reached is public (orig-013). The same milestone table planned to submit the final safety analysis on 6 January 2026 for a 45-day review; POWER, citing Valar's posts, reports DOE approved it on 23 April 2026 (safe-006), later than planned but before criticality. Has not happened: the Philippine pilot (the February 2025 funding coverage reported a contract to pilot a test reactor and build two full-scale reactors there) had no reactor built as of the latest report read, April 2026 (fund-003, orig-064); the Emery gas-fired supercritical-CO2 heater Valar asked to finish by June 2026 has had only a design phase approved (gov-014). Too early to judge: 'commercial deployment by 2028' (July 2025 town hall, orig-045); 275 jobs and $1.3 billion invested in Emery (fund-017); fleet production of 'thousands of reactors' (Series B post). Changed: the plan described to residents as a 12-month test in a temporary facility became a permanent fuel-and-reactor base and a Carbon County campus (mine-019).

• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev. 02, Appendix B: Table 7 Project Milestones (Valar Atomics (Public Documents), 2025-10) primary company “Initial Criticality 06/30/2026”
• Valar Atomics (homepage) (Valar Atomics) primary company “go live before America's 250th birthday on July 4th, 2026”
• Valar Atomics, a nuclear startup backed by Palmer Luckey and Palantir CTO, raises $130M to build thousands of advanced reactors (Daniel Levi) (Tech Startups, 2025-11-10) news “on track to demonstrate 100 kilowatts of thermal energy by July 4”
• Valar Atomics comes out of stealth with $19M and a pilot reactor site (Mike Butcher) (TechCrunch, 2025-02-20) news “build two full-scale reactors before the first integrated reactor comes online”
• Announcing our $1B Series B Led By Sequoia (Isaiah Taylor) (Valar Atomics, 2026-08-04) primary company “Thousands of reactors clustered strategically throughout the nation”

By role, from the records read (professional roles only). Board seats on record: Shaun Maguire, Sequoia partner, joined with the Series B (fund-007); Doug Philippone, Snowpoint Ventures co-founder and Palantir's former head of global defense, joined with the Series A (fund-004, ppl-010); Stephen Marcus, Riot Ventures co-founder, per his firm's page (fund-002). Valar publishes no board list and files no Form D (fund-010), so the full board is unknown. Round leads: Riot Ventures (pre-seed, seed); Snowpoint, Day One and Dream (Series A); Sequoia, whose portfolio page lists Liam Corrigan as a second partner on Valar (Series B). Other named equity investors: AlleyCorp, Initialized Capital, Steel Atlas, Contrary, Apandion, Atreides Management, Conviction, HOF Capital, Point72 and Valor Equity Partners; individuals Palmer Luckey (Anduril founder), Shyam Sankar (Palantir CTO), John Donovan (Lockheed Martin director, per The Next Web and Tech Startups) and Balaji Srinivasan (seed, per Mother Jones, ppl-010). Lenders: TriplePoint's two funds ($5M, 2025, fund-005); Erebor Bank (administrative agent), J.P. Morgan, Crescent Cove and Hercules Capital ($200M facility, fund-009), with the OCC's 2025 approval letter listing Luckey as an Erebor director and principal shareholder. Valar's side of the table: President and CFO Muhammad Shahzad, formerly Relativity Space's president and CFO (ppl-005); counsel Goodwin Procter. What the record supports: several named backers come from defense-technology companies (Anduril, Palantir, Lockheed Martin's board), and one equity backer, Luckey, is also a director and principal shareholder of the bank leading Valar's credit facility. How much each backer put in is not public.

• Announcing our $1B Series B Led By Sequoia (Isaiah Taylor) (Valar Atomics, 2026-08-04) primary company “the closing of a $1 billion Series B financing led by Sequoia Capital”
• Valar Atomics (portfolio page: Founded 2023, Partnered 2026; partners Shaun Maguire, Liam Corrigan) (Sequoia Capital) primary company “Valar Atomics is scaling nuclear fission reactors to make energy in the universe cheaper”
• Stephen Marcus (partner biography) (Riot Ventures) primary company “Steve serves on the Boards of Shield AI (aerospace and defense), Valar Atomics (nuclear power)”
• New financing round benefits Valar (American Nuclear Society, Nuclear Newswire, 2025-11-13) news “led by venture capital groups Snowpoint, Day One, and Dream”
• A 27-year-old just raised $450 million to bet that AI's future runs on nuclear power (Cristian Dina) (The Next Web, 2026-04-01) news “Lockheed Martin board member and former AT&T chief executive John Donovan also participated.”
• Conditional Approval Letter: Application to Charter Erebor Bank, National Association, Columbus, Ohio (OCC Control No. 2025-Charter-342076) (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, 2025-10-15) primary government “Palmer Luckey Director, Principal Shareholder”
• TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp., Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026 (EDGAR accession 0001580345-26-000021), Consolidated Schedules of Investments (TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp. (SEC filing, company investor-relations copy), 2026-05-06) primary filing “Growth Capital Loan (Prime + 3.50% interest rate, 10.75% floor, 3.00% EOT payment)”

A search of the Federal Register's public API on 29 September 2026 for 'Valar Atomics', 'Valar', 'Ward250' and 'Ward 250' returns one document: the 6 July 2026 Defense Production Act agreement listing Valar among 84 signers (gov-001). No Federal Register notice names Ward 250, the San Rafael Energy Lab, a Valar environmental review, a DOE authorization or a comment period for Valar. The rules that governed Ward 250 did appear there in general form: Executive Order 14301 (29 May 2025) and DOE's categorical exclusion B5.26 (2 February 2026, effective on publication, comments taken afterward to 4 March; safe-029, csite-020). The Ward 250 categorical exclusion itself (22 April 2026) was posted on DOE's website, with a June 2026 web path, not in the Register. The Reactor Pilot Program request for applications ran on FedConnect (gov-007). The federal process for this reactor therefore gave the public no Valar-specific Federal Register notice and no comment period; the one Valar-specific federal decision document found, the categorical exclusion, was posted on DOE's website.

• Federal Register API search: 'Valar Atomics' (1 result), also 'Valar', 'Ward250', 'Ward 250' (run 2026-09-29) (Office of the Federal Register (federalregister.gov API)) primary government
• Implementing Voluntary Agreements Under the Defense Production Act (FR Doc. 2026-13486) (Federal Register (GPO govinfo), 2026-07-06) primary government
• NEPA Determination DOE-ID-26-005: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor (categorical exclusion B5.26) (U.S. Department of Energy, Idaho Operations Office, 2026-04-22) primary government

Holds on the record: DOE did select (12 Aug 2025) and authorize Ward 250, the only one of DOE's four summer-2026 criticalities outside a national laboratory (gov-006, orig-010); DOE's agreement with Valar carries $0 of federal money, like all nine pilot agreements (gov-003); Valar's federal lobbying is modest, disclosed and aimed at Congress (gov-004); Emery County's land sale followed state statute (gov-022); Valar's statement that DOE reviews and approves its design holds for the test reactor (gov-039). Where statements and records part: KUTV reported the governor speaking of NRC oversight while the state's signed MOU named DOE rules and Utah was suing to keep small reactors out of NRC licensing (gov-012, reported); the state lab's FAQ still tells the public 'the planned reactor' gets NRC licensing and NRC-tested operators, which the lab's only operating reactor does not have (gov-026); the state lab calls 18 June 'full-power' criticality when it was a zero-power test (orig-012); Valar told the state's incentive board of 'commercial units' and behind-the-meter sales, which the DOE route does not cover (gov-033, gov-039); Valar said in April 2026, at the Emery parcel hearing, it would 'be open with all plans'; the first public record tying it to the Carbon site is the August 2026 agenda (gov-038); DOE counted reactors at Idaho National Laboratory toward a goal titled 'outside the National Laboratories', though its own application rules allowed lab sites (gov-006); a think tank's release called NOVA the pilot's first criticality, DOE says Antares was (gov-028); officials' statements on transparency and the MOU's confidentiality term and its bar on publicity without both parties' consent sit side by side in the record (gov-011, gov-020); the DOE-Utah campus pact cites Ward 250's 'successful permitting', but no state permit was found (gov-030); county and Inland Port records disagree on whether Valar's land is in a tax-capture zone (gov-023); Valar's groundbreaking date differs from the state's (gov-015). Unexplained: where Valar's HALEU came from, given it is in none of DOE's announced allocation rounds (gov-008). Not found in public records: the OTA text, the DOE safety approvals and the readiness report Valar described to the state board in May 2026 (DOE confirmed in July 2026 that a federal readiness review covering Ward 250 ended in a final report to the startup authority; safe-007, gov-037, dir-031), the state lab use agreement and board-approved terms (gov-013), and the pilot program's application rules (gov-032). Process: no Federal Register notice or comment period specific to Valar (gov-029), no local-government consent required under the pilot's rules as summarized (gov-032), and local approvals given quickly, sometimes with no review recorded (gov-021, gov-022). None of this record shows intent; it shows gaps that records requests can close.

• Memorandum of Understanding between OED and Valar Atomics, May 16, 2025 (Utah Office of Energy Development, 2026-01-12) primary government
• FAQs | Utah San Rafael Energy Lab (Utah San Rafael Energy Lab, 2025-11-19) primary government
• FACT SHEET: The Golden Era of American Nuclear Energy Has Arrived (U.S. Department of Energy, 2026-07-25) primary government
• GOED Board Meeting Minutes, July 9, 2026 (Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity, 2026-09-10) primary government

ETV News describes itself as a free weekly delivered to every home and business in Carbon and Emery counties (circulation 13,800), with a website and cable channels that air government meetings; its contact address is at emerytelcom.com. The two other local papers' sites (Sun Advocate, Emery County Progress) did not answer (sources_not_read). ETV's search feed for 'valar' returned 48 items: 47 from 3 July 2025 to 23 September 2026 and one unrelated 2017 column; 46 of the 47 name Valar in their text and one (a 25 February 2026 Carbon Commission report) refers to the Emery reactor without naming the company. All 47 were checked. Two 2025 items told readers the plan was bigger than one test reactor: the 17 September 2025 state release on the groundbreaking ended with Valar's description of itself as building 'gigasites' of thousands of reactors, and a 10 October 2025 article reported that Valar's 'current plan' was a manufacturing hub in Carbon County after about three years (loc-034); neither named a site. The first report of the Wellington lease is dated 18 September 2026, the day after the vote (mine-041); no earlier item links Valar to Wellington, the Section 16 trust land or a Carbon lease (two earlier items mention trust land in other contexts: 640 acres across the road from the Emery lab, 9 April 2026, and a Farm Bureau speaker on the Trust Lands permit process for solar, 1 May 2026). Six items are press releases printed as articles: from the state lab (23 Jan and 23 Sept 2026), from Valar (24 Feb 2026), from the Office of Energy Development (17 Sept 2025, orig-067), from USU Eastern (26 Mar 2026) and from Southern Utah University (19 Sept 2026). Most of the rest are meeting reports. Residents' concerns appear in them (the June 2025 county hearing on nuclear, the April 2026 land-sale hearing, a resident's data-center presentation in July 2026, a candidate forum where one candidate called nuclear the most expensive source), but no ETV item read quotes an independent expert assessing Valar's reactor or its safety. ETV's post-vote article (18 Sept) reports the lease terms and supporters' remarks and notes that permits are still needed; it reports no opposing comment, which matches the hearing record (mine-014).

• About Us - ETV News (ETV News) news
• ETV News search feed for 'valar' (RSS, pages 1-3, 48 items; re-read 29 Sept 2026) (ETV News) news
• Valar Atomics secures land agreement for Carbon County project (Stephanie Olsen) (ETV News, 2026-09-18) news
• Rapid construction from local contractors at Valar Atomics (USREL press release) (ETV News, 2026-01-23) primary government “will house Valar’s fuel fabrication facility”
• Utah San Rafael Energy Lab gives update on projects (USREL press release) (ETV News, 2026-09-23) primary government
• Valar Atomics welcomes community for reactor facility open house (Valar Atomics press release) (ETV News, 2026-02-24) primary company “it is not a commercial power plant”
• Valar Atomics breaks ground on test reactor at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab (Utah Office of Energy Development press release) (ETV News, 2025-09-17) primary government “Valar Atomics is building America’s first nuclear gigasites”
• What’s actually happening at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab? (Susanna Watts) (ETV News, 2025-10-10) news “their current plan is to build a manufacturing hub in Carbon County”

As of 29 September 2026, testing against local records the view that the Carbon site should have been handled in public and that residents did not know. What holds for the company: in Emery County Valar appeared before towns, districts and residents at least 15 times and held open houses (loc-027); Emery's land sale was noticed by name and heard (loc-007); its fuel plant was disclosed in public (loc-016); and in 2025 the local paper printed Valar's 'gigasites' aim and reported a plan for a Carbon County manufacturing hub, without a site (loc-034). What the record shows on the Carbon site: the state's newspaper notice named no applicant or use (loc-032); no report or minutes of Valar's June-September appearances before Carbon bodies, including a Price council work session, name the Wellington site (loc-012); the local paper first reported it the day after the vote (loc-011); a week before the vote the CEO spoke publicly of hundreds of reactors in Carbon and Emery without, as reported, naming a site (loc-001); a commissioner said project NDAs are usually companies' demand (loc-002), and the county's own minutes record it kept a 'strict' NDA on a different factory prospect until August 2026 (loc-036); no NDA with Valar was found. Gaps between words and records: the state lab director, as ETV reported, said firms must show 'no dose' at the fence, while Valar's own analysis gives a small dose (loc-035); Carbon commissioners called the test reactor 'commercial' and the data center waterless (loc-005); a local report of a chamber tour said meltdown risk is gone (loc-006); Valar told Castle Dale its reactor needs about 10 acre-feet of water for industrial use while DOE's review lists only domestic use (loc-025); officials and the state port authority describe the Emery land as sold while Valar said in August it awaited clean title (loc-014); Valar said it 'relocated' from California while most of its openings are there (loc-029); in April Valar said many of its 120 Emery workers did not live in Utah (loc-004). Process gaps: district minutes record a staff report that Valar tied into the sewer 'without prior authorization' (loc-015); the state declined to review the reactor building's fire plans and no record shows who did (loc-018); Emery had no nuclear zoning rules and has now paused new major permit applications (loc-024); Orangeville is drafting a zone for Valar's land with Valar's lawyers reviewing, no hearing yet (loc-013); no water-right application by Valar has been advertised (loc-031). None of this shows intent; it shows where the public was and was not given the facts in time to act, and which records requests would close each gap (open_questions).

• TRUST LANDS OPPORTUNITY (legal notice: Township 14 South, Range 11 East, Section 16, near Wellington) (Utah Trust Lands Administration (legal notice published in ETV News), 2026-07-15) primary government “has received an application on the following property near Wellington”
• Community gets closer look at Valar Atomics during open house (Scottie Kraync) (ETV News, 2026-09-14) news “as we grow here in your backyard, in your community”
• Orangeville City Planning and Zoning Commission minutes, July 16, 2026 (notice text) (Orangeville City Planning and Zoning, 2026-07-16) primary government “Everything needs to go through the attorneys from the City and Valar.”
• CVSSD Regular Meeting Minutes, March 19, 2026 (approved) (Castle Valley Special Service District, 2026-03-19) primary government “Valar tied into the county sewer system without prior authorization”
• Emery County Fire Protection SSD meeting minutes, February 17, 2026 (header misprints the year as 2025) (Emery County Fire Protection Special Service District, 2026-02-17) primary government “State agencies declined to perform plan review and recommended third-party review.”
• Castle Dale City Council Meeting Minutes, March 12, 2026 (approved; scanned, read as page images) (Castle Dale City, 2026-03-12) primary government “The reactor requires minimal water—about 10 acre-feet for industrial use”
• August 13, 2026 City Council Minutes (Orangeville) (Orangeville City, 2026-08-13) primary government “waiting on a clean title to purchase the property”
• Leaders look to coal, nuclear and new industry for growth at local energy summit (Kevin Butler) (ETV News, 2026-08-14) news “typically required by private companies considering an area”
• What’s actually happening at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab? (Susanna Watts) (ETV News, 2025-10-10) news “their current plan is to build a manufacturing hub in Carbon County”
• Aug 19, 2026 Commission Meeting Minutes (Carbon County Board of Commissioners; scanned, read as page images) (Carbon County Commission, 2026-08-19) primary government “The strict NDA was necessary to protect the company's plans”
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement (Document 100403, Revision 02, marked draft, October 2025) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company “Preliminary results indicate site boundary doses below 0.5 rem Total Effective Dose Equivalent”

A spatial query of both BLM claim layers against the Census boundary of Carbon County (pulled 2026-09-29) returned 10 open claims and 1 recently closed claim. Nine are lode claims AMBERIA 1-9 (serials UT106330298 to UT106330306), created in BLM's system on 9 and 13 November 2023, status 'Filed', in T14S R8E-R9E, about 23 km west of the Trust Lands parcel approved for leasing to Valar (Sec. 16, T14S R11E, see mine-010). The tenth is the placer claim BLACK RIFLE (UT106782094), created 11 February 2026, status 'Filed', mapped to the SW quarter of the NE quarter of Sec. 12, T15S R11E, about 9.4 km south-east of that parcel. An earlier 160-acre placer claim of the same name (UT106369066, created 13 May 2024) in the NE quarter of the same section is now 'Closed'. Claims created since 1 January 2024: 2 (both BLACK RIFLE). No claim name in the county points to Valar, Ward, Valarin or Numenor, and the layer does not show who staked any of them. Distances are between section centroids from BLM's survey grid and the claims' mapped centroids.

• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Not Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BOC National County Boundaries Map Service (Census county boundaries served by BLM) (Bureau of Land Management) primary government
• BLM National PLSS CadNSDI, PLSS Section layer (Bureau of Land Management) primary government

The same query for Emery County returned 1,706 open claims (1,390 lode, 316 placer; 563 'Active', 1,143 'Filed') and 354 claims closed within the last year. Claims created in BLM's system since 1 January 2024: 968 still open and 168 closed, 1,136 in all, in 32 name groups. The largest: 'SS' (341 lode claims, January to April 2024, mostly T23S R15E with some in T23S R14E and T22S R15E); 'GP' (90 placer, August 2025, T22S R8E-R9E); 'GREEN' (83 lode, January 2024, all now closed); 'SAB' (71), 'ECC' (70) and 'SWG' (63), lode claims of May to August 2024 in T22S R15E; 'J' (56 lode), 'GRU' (56 placer, August 2025), 'WB' (54 lode); 'BH' (43 lode, February 2026, T18S R10E-R11E) and 'BIG BODY' (31 lode, February-March 2026, T22S R14E). None of the 1,136 names points to Valar or its product names. The public layer shows neither the claimants nor the mineral sought.

• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Not Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BOC National County Boundaries Map Service (Census county boundaries served by BLM) (Bureau of Land Management) primary government

Querying both BLM layers for Utah serial numbers created on or after 29 September 2025 returned 7,139 open and 186 closed claims (7,325). Of the open ones 5,872 are lode, 1,260 placer and 7 mill sites; their dispositions are 'Filed' (7,089), 'Under Review' (27), 'Active' (12) and 'Draft' (11); all 186 closed ones are lode. Assigning each claim's mapped centroid to a county: lode claims are most numerous in Beaver (1,570), Millard (944), Washington (812), Tooele (670), Box Elder (590), Juab (419), Iron (250) and San Juan (196); Emery has 76 (all lode) and Carbon has none (its one new claim is a placer). 73 open claims have no mapped geometry. Emery's 76 are the BH (43, February 2026), BIG BODY (31, February-March 2026) and WF (2, March 2026) blocks; its 53 closed ones (GV 36 and WHEAL ANNE 16, filed October 2025, and FT 1, January 2026) were filed and closed within the year. The 38 labelled 'Draft' or 'Under Review' are in Garfield (11 Draft), Tooele (8), Iron, Piute, Utah and Wasatch counties, or not yet located (15); none is in Carbon or Emery. No new Utah claim carries a Valar-related name (mine-005).

• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Not Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BOC National County Boundaries Map Service (Census county boundaries served by BLM) (Bureau of Land Management) primary government

Name searches of both claim layers nationwide (open claims, and claims closed within the last year) for VALAR, VALARIN, NUMENOR, WINDLORD, WARD 250, WARD ZERO, WARD ONE, WARD 1 and WARD250 returned only unrelated names: VALARIE QUEEN (Nevada) and WARD 1 (Nevada), both old claims carried into BLM's new system in January 2021; Ward 1 (Montana, filed 16 September 2026); GOLDEN REWARD 1 (Washington); Sweet Reward 1 (Idaho); and a closed WESTWARD 1 (Colorado). In Utah the only claim name containing WARD is EDWARD PEARL (an old claim carried over in 2021). BLM's public 3809 notice, plan-of-operations and lease/permit/easement layers show no case with Valar as customer anywhere; the only Valar records are three rights-of-way applications (mine-006).

• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Not Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Locatable Notices (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Plans of Operations (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Leases, Permits, and Easements (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Rights of Way (ROW) (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing

The Green River Gigasite application (UTUT106784007) lists 22 sections: T20S R14E secs. 24-25; T20S R15E secs. 19-21, 25-31 and 33-35; T21S R15E secs. 1, 3-5 and 12; T21S R16E secs. 5-6. None of the 2,060 Emery County claims in either BLM claim layer (open, or closed within the year) lists any of those sections. The nearest claim activity is in other sections of the same and neighboring townships (e.g. the GFU placers in T21S R15E and GRU placers in T21S R16E, August 2025). The application skips sections 32 and 36 of T20S R15E and section 2 of T21S R15E.

• BLM Natl MLRS Rights of Way (ROW) (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Not Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing

Valar's community page for Carbon and Emery counties, read 29 September 2026, describes Ward 250, open houses ('more than 400 neighbors' at the first), town halls, the Emery County Commission's unanimous backing, local partners and news items. The words Green River, Wellington, Beehive, Raceway, BLM, Bureau of Land Management, trust, lease, acres and Price do not appear on it; 'Carbon' appears only in the page's 'Carbon & Emery County, Utah' headings. The company's document library (valaratomics.com/docs) lists five documents (a Series B announcement, the NOVA criticality release, a pilot-program selection, a roadmap and its NRC lawsuit) and no land, siting or environmental document. The page does say Valar 'is building America's first nuclear gigasites', energy campuses powered by fleets of reactors, without saying where; that text is the same in the Internet Archive's copy of 18 September 2026 and on 29 September.

• Castle Country | Valar Atomics (Valar Atomics) primary company “More than 400 neighbors came to our first open house”
• Library | Valar Atomics (Valar Atomics) primary company
• Castle Country (Internet Archive copy, 18 September 2026) (Internet Archive, 2026-09-18) primary company “building America's first nuclear gigasites”

Checking each route to a reactor site against the record: the Carbon site is state trust land that Trust Lands approved leasing to Valar (mine-010, mine-011), where federal claims cannot be staked (mine-021); the Green River and 'Project Beehive' sites are FLPMA land-use applications to BLM (mine-006), with no claims in the Green River footprint (mine-007); the Emery expansion is a land purchase from Emery County (mine-018); the test reactor sits on the state's lab by agreement (orig-045). No mining claim, 3809 notice or plan of operations in BLM's public layers is linked to Valar by name or customer (mine-005, mine-030). Federal law allows an unpatented claim to be used only for prospecting, mining or processing (mine-022, mine-023). Separately, the posted notice shows Valar located the RW 453 lode claim in Section 28, two miles south of the lease, on 12 September 2026 (fld-002, csite-019); it is not yet in BLM's layers, which is within the 90-day filing window (dir-005).

• BLM Natl MLRS Rights of Way (ROW) (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Mining Claims - Not Closed (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• 8.20.2026 TLA Board Packet (Discussion Item 9A: SULA 2095 OBA, Board Meeting Discussion Memorandum) (Utah Trust Lands Administration (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-08-20) primary government
• 30 U.S.C. 612: Restrictions and limitations on use of unpatented mining claims (Surface Resources Act) (Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House, 1955-07-23) primary government

Queries of BLM's public MLRS layers for 'VALAR' in the customer or case name returned 0 locatable-mineral notices, 0 plans of operations and 0 leases/permits/easements nationwide, and 3 rights-of-way cases (mine-006). The layers include pending and authorized cases.

• BLM Natl MLRS Locatable Notices (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Plans of Operations (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Leases, Permits, and Easements (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing
• BLM Natl MLRS Rights of Way (ROW) (feature layer and query results) (Bureau of Land Management (MLRS)) primary filing

BLM's Surface Management Agency map, queried at the centers of the surrounding sections of T14S R11E on 29 September 2026, shows Section 16 managed by the State and Sections 10, 15, 17, 20, 21 and 22 managed by BLM (Sections 8 and 9 were not returned by the survey-grid query). The lease map in the September Trust Lands packet shows the parcel with a legend of Bureau of Land Management, private and state trust lands. The surrounding BLM land is the kind of land where federal mining claims can be staked unless it has been withdrawn; BLM's public claim layer shows none there (mine-002).

• BLM National Surface Management Agency (SMA), limited scale, layer 1 (point queries) (Bureau of Land Management) primary government
• BLM National PLSS CadNSDI, PLSS Section layer (Bureau of Land Management) primary government
• 09.17.2026 TLA Board Packet (Notification Item 10A: SULA 2095-OBA memorandum, Carbon County letter, lease map) (Utah Trust Lands Administration (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-09-17) primary government

The Trust Lands memorandum says HALEU, LEU+ or LEU feedstock may be delivered to the Carbon site in certified special-nuclear-material containers under NRC, DOT and DOE rules and made into TRISO fuel there. POWER magazine's 19 June 2026 report on Ward 250 noted Utah hosts the nation's only fully licensed operating conventional uranium mill, but said it would add details on fuel sourcing later. POWER's report on DOE's second round of HALEU allocations (27 August 2025) names Antares, Standard Nuclear and Abilene Christian University/Natura as recipients; it mentions Valar only as a Reactor Pilot Program participant. No record read names the supplier of Ward 250's fuel or of Valar's planned feedstock, and none links it to Utah mines or mills. The claims staking in Emery County (mine-003) and the uranium exploration notices there (mine-029) show no link to Valar.

• 8.20.2026 TLA Board Packet (Discussion Item 9A: SULA 2095 OBA, Board Meeting Discussion Memorandum) (Utah Trust Lands Administration (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-08-20) primary government “feedstock may be delivered to the site in certified Special Nuclear Material (SNM) containers”
• Valar Atomic's Ward 250 Becomes Second Reactor to Go Critical Under DOE Pilot Program (POWER (Sonal C. Patel), 2026-06-19) news
• DOE Allocates Second Round of HALEU Fuel to Three U.S. Nuclear Companies (POWER (Sonal C. Patel), 2025-08-27) news

The Trust Lands memo relays Valar's statement that no Quaternary-active faults lie within the site and that the nearest are the Pleasant Valley fault zone about 20 miles north-west and faults in the Price River area (mine-016). A query of the Utah Geological Survey's Quaternary fault layer on 29 September 2026 found no mapped Quaternary fault within 10 km of the center of Sec. 16; the nearest is 'Price River Area faults' at about 23 km (age under 2.6 million years, slip under 0.2 mm a year), then strands of the Pleasant Valley fault zone from about 37 km (about 23 miles) and the Joes Valley fault zone at about 45 km, one strand of which is mapped as younger than 15,000 years. The company's 'low-seismicity zone' description was not tested here.

• Utah Quaternary Faults (Hazards/quaternary_faults MapServer, distance queries) (Utah Geological Survey) primary government
• 8.20.2026 TLA Board Packet (Discussion Item 9A: SULA 2095 OBA, Board Meeting Discussion Memorandum) (Utah Trust Lands Administration (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-08-20) primary government “No Quaternary-active faults exist within the site boundary.”

Read 2026-09-29, the page data behind Valar's library lists nine posts. Five are listed: 'Valar Atomics is Suing the NRC' (April 7, 2025), 'Roadmap to the American Nuclear Golden Age' (May 23, 2025), the DOE selection post (August 12, 2025), the Project NOVA release (November 18, 2025) and the Series B post (August 4, 2026). Four are not listed but load at their addresses: the Ward250 NSDA post and the QA Program Description post (both dated October 13, 2025), the 'Ward 250 By the Numbers' draft (June 28, 2026, with placeholders; orig-035) and the 'Ward Zero Whitepaper' (orig-058). The only technical documents published are two PDFs in the site's 'Public Documents' asset folder, the NSDA (document 100403, rev 02, marked Draft) and the QA Program Description (document 100474, rev 02), both linked only from the unlisted posts. Three placeholder posts seen in April 2025, with 'Lorem ipsum' bodies, are gone. Nothing on the site publishes the PDSA, the final DSA, the Technical Safety Requirements, DOE's safety evaluation, the readiness review, the startup approval, the OTA or any Ward Zero test data (safe-007, orig-055, orig-059). The press list has not been updated since February 28, 2026 (orig-048), and the Ward 250 page's progress list still stops at the September 2025 groundbreaking.

• Library | Valar Atomics (page and its embedded data) (Valar Atomics) primary company “The Valar Atomics knowledge base.”
• Ward 250 | Valar Atomics (page data lists all nine posts with their listing flags) (Valar Atomics) primary company
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02 (status: Draft) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary filing “issued for Public Release”
• Valar Atomics library page as archived by the Internet Archive, 8 April 2025 (Valar Atomics (archived copy, Internet Archive), 2025-04-08) primary company “Lorem ipsum”

Does not hold, or conflicts with the record: 'first company ever to take a nuclear reactor critical outside of a national lab' (General Atomics did so in 1958; ppl-030, orig-066); electricity 'just a week later', actually thirteen days by Valar's own dates (orig-070); the spent-fuel 'CT scan' claim, which engineers calculated to be a fatal dose as press reports describe (their inputs, such as distance and cooling time, are not in the record read; the worked check on the Proofs page, pf-007, gives about 75 to 334 mSv whole-body for all the spent fuel held 50 cm from the body a day after shutdown, and less than a CT scan for one pebble, on partly assumed inputs; the two rest on different assumptions and are not directly comparable), still posted and since tagged to ask search engines not to list it (safe-026, orig-061); fuel listed as 4.95% in the safety agreement but HALEU in DOE's shipping review (orig-040, disc-001). Official statements that did not match the record: Utah's lab page calling June 18 'full-power' criticality (orig-012); the governor's 2025 description of NRC oversight (orig-065). Not borne out as of 2026: 'we are building and testing this reactor in the Philippines' (April 2025), with no reactor built there a year later (orig-018, orig-064). Holds only narrowly: 'first startup to split the atom' (a Los Alamos-run test; orig-047); 'record time' (true from the Utah groundbreaking, not for the reactor hardware; orig-060); 'no burden on our water supply' (true for reactor cooling, not the wider campus; orig-070). Holds: DOE selection and criticality before July 4, 2026 (orig-006, orig-010); 'seven months' to criticality, counted from the Nevada core test (orig-015); 'first-ever C-17 airlift of a nuclear reactor' as worded (orig-066); the unfueled airlift (orig-030); the funding announcements, as reported (orig-057); Delaware incorporation (orig-051). Unsupported in public: Ward Zero test results the safety case relies on, with the only 'whitepaper' page holding the text of a 2019 essay by another author, not Ward Zero data (orig-058, orig-059); hydrogen and synthetic-fuel production (orig-063). Cannot be checked yet: the July 4, 2023 founding date (orig-053); the power Ward 250 reached (orig-013); 'world's first binding Coordinated Research Project' with PNRI (orig-064); that Ward One is named in the NRC lawsuit (safe-028); who made the fuel (orig-032). Changed over time: from a 12-month test in a temporary facility to a permanent fuel-and-reactor base and a Carbon County campus (orig-045, mine-019); from fuel synthesis to AI power (orig-063). Public dealing on Carbon County: Valar has spoken of Carbon County only in general terms, and none of its own publications names the Wellington site or the claim it staked (orig-075). Each gap is stated as a gap; none of this shows intent.

• Announcing our $1B Series B Led By Sequoia (Isaiah Taylor) (Valar Atomics, 2026-08-04) primary company
• Valar Atomics is Suing the NRC (Isaiah Taylor) (Valar Atomics, 2025-04-07) primary company
• Castle Country | Valar Atomics (Valar Atomics) primary company
• TRIGA International - History of Training Research Isotope production General Atomics (conference abstract, 2008) (U.S. DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (ETDEWEB), 2008-10-29) analysis

What holds (as of 29 September 2026): Valar built a 100 kWt test reactor in California and flew it to Emery County unfueled; DOE approved HALEU TRISO fuel for shipment to it from a federal site in Nevada (no public record states what fuel is loaded, disc-004); and DOE announced its zero-power criticality on 18 June 2026, ahead of the July 4 goal and of Valar's own 30 June target (plan-002, plan-004, plan-008, plan-014). A fuel lab stands beside it and is hiring for a pilot TRISO line (plan-015). What rests on the company's word: full power (plan-006; the only data is an unlabeled chart, plan-007), the electricity demonstration's output (ETV reported the reactor at 37% power, plan-010), and the fuel plant's future size (plan-015). Where Valar's own statements clash: full power on 'June 21' in the state's lease memo versus a 10 kWt output announced 22 June (plan-009); a 12-month demonstration in the approved papers versus a permanent base and 'largest' fuel maker in local talks (plan-003, plan-015); a July 4 date still in the future tense on the homepage (plan-019). Where a Valar document and a DOE document differ: the fuel is listed at 4.95% enrichment in Valar's safety agreement but as HALEU (under 20%) in DOE's shipping review (plan-014, disc-001). What is plan only: fleets and 'thousands of reactors per year' (plan-020), a Carbon County campus with no reactor count, size or date (plan-016), a 30 MW NVIDIA data center (plan-010), a turbine program (plan-018), 'one of Valar's first commercial projects' in Utah (plan-011). What has not happened: the Philippine reactor, the gas-fired test heater, fuel from Valar's own line, the Green River gigasite (plan-021). No power buyer, utility contract or military reactor contract is on the record (plan-012, plan-013). Every site on record is in plan-017; every physical movement of reactor and fuel in plan-025.

• Department of Energy Celebrates Second Advanced Reactor Achieving Criticality (U.S. Department of Energy, 2026-06-18) primary government
• Board of Trustees Meeting Materials, September 17, 2026 (SULA 2095-OBA staff memo) (Utah Trust Lands Administration, via Utah Public Notice Website, 2026-09-17) primary government
• Valar Atomics job board (public Greenhouse feed, 92 postings) (Valar Atomics (via Greenhouse), 2026-09-28) primary company
• Announcing our $1B Series B Led By Sequoia (Valar Atomics, 2026-08-04) primary company

Valar's unlisted, unfinished post dated 28 June 2026 says Ward 250 underwent 'extremely rigorous non-nuclear testing' at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California, before it reached Utah, with temperatures above 750 C and pressures over 6 MPa, thermal cycling and transients; the whole reactor system is six high-cube shipping containers. DOE's Fuel Line Pilot Program page lists the company as 'Valar Atomics Inc. (Hawthorne, California)'. On 29 September 2026 its public job board lists 71 of 92 openings in Torrance, California, including a graphite production lead for machining 'reactor components', CNC programmers, machinists, a welding lead for welds to 'nuclear-grade specifications', and eight turbomachinery roles; two posts name Hawthorne as a work base (a Torrance-listed commercial project manager to 'operate in both Hawthorne and Utah', and an Orangeville-listed people-operations director to be based in or relocate to Hawthorne), and a Utah post mentions travel to the 'Los Angeles headquarters'. The Carbon County claim notice carries a Torrance address (orig-036). In short: reactors and their parts are designed, machined and tested in the Los Angeles area; Utah is where they are fuelled and run. Non-nuclear heat tests are not limited by the nuclear safety limits in the NSDA (a 650 C limit versus 750 C goals, disc-002), so the 750 C figure is not a conflict with them.

• Ward 250 By the Numbers (unlisted, unfinished post, dated 28 June 2026) (Valar Atomics, 2026-06-28) primary company “The system experienced temps above 750c and pressures over 6MPa.”
• Energy Department Fuel Line Pilot Program (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, 2026-02-12) primary government
• Valar Atomics job board (public Greenhouse feed, 92 postings) (Valar Atomics (via Greenhouse), 2026-09-28) primary company “Graphite is a specialized, abrasive material central to our reactor components”
• Graphite Production Lead (Torrance, California) (Valar Atomics (via Greenhouse), 2026-09-21) primary company

Built or operating: Ward 250 and its fuel lab at the San Rafael lab, Emery County (plan-002); the company's design, machining and test shops in Hawthorne/Torrance, California (plan-008). Used once: the NOVA test core at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center, Nevada, operated by Los Alamos in November 2025 (orig-008). Being acquired: the 112-acre Emery County parcel beside the lab (gov-022, loc-014). Lease approved: on 17 September 2026 the state trust-lands board approved a lease with purchase option for 480 acres of the section north of Wellington, with the other 160 acres to follow if the National Guard's lease there is moved (mine-011, plan-016); no record read shows the lease signed. Applied for: three Bureau of Land Management cases, all in the Price Field Office, all 'Pending' on 29 September 2026: UTUT106784007 'Green River Gigasite Small Modular Reactor/Data Center' (10,270.61 acres, filed 13 February 2026, which Valar told The Washington Sun it no longer pursues, mine-008), UTUT106801248 'Project Beehive Small Modular Reactor/Data Center' (case date 13 April 2026, no acreage shown), and UTUT106833224, a distribution-line case with no name (entered 23 July 2026). NPR reported on 30 September 2026, citing a Valar proposal to federal regulators that NPR reviewed, that Project Beehive would cover over 9,000 acres of BLM land near Price with data centers, some 456 small reactors of 25 megawatts of electricity each, a fuel facility and nuclear-waste storage, with the first reactors in 2028; BLM's Utah office told NPR it had received an application and was reviewing it for completeness. The proposal itself was not found in public records. No BLM rights-of-way case names Valar outside Utah, and its other public layers show no Valar claims, notices, leases or permits (mine-005, mine-030). Program: NRIC's August 2026 Launch Pad round includes Valar; POWER describes Ward 250 and the Valarin facility (gov-010). Abroad: Ward One in the Philippines, announced March 2025 and still unbuilt and without an approved site as of the last report read (orig-064). Valar says it looked at more than 20 states (ppl-006, loc-001); no site in another state was found in any public record read.

• BLM National MLRS Land Use Authorizations - Rights-of-Way (query: customer name contains 'VALAR', run 2026-09-29) (U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 2026-09-15) primary government “Green River Gigasite Small Modular Reactor/Data Center”
• Castle Country (Valar Atomics, 2026-09) primary company
• Board of Trustees Meeting slides, August 20, 2026 (SULA 2095 Other Business Arrangement) (Utah Trust Lands Administration, via Utah Public Notice Website, 2026-08-20) primary government “Selected by Valar Atomics following multi-state search”
• A startup wants to build a massive nuclear-powered data center on public land in Utah (NPR, 2026-09-30) news “some 456 small nuclear reactors”

Read on 29 September 2026, Valar's homepage says Valar is 'building hundreds of nuclear reactors on Valar Atomics gigasites' focused on hydrogen (by a sulfur-iodine cycle), data-center power, heavy industrial power and clean hydrocarbon fuels, and that it is partnering with DOE, the San Rafael lab and Utah 'to go live before America's 250th birthday on July 4th, 2026', a date now three months past, written as still ahead. Its technology page says the non-nuclear Ward Zero prototype is 'ready to go live'. The record: one test reactor has been built and operated (plan-002, plan-006); no gigasite has been approved anywhere (the Carbon lease holds land pending permits, plan-016; the Green River application was dropped, mine-008); no hydrogen or synthetic fuel has been produced (orig-063). 'Building hundreds' describes an aim, not work under way. The newer Castle Country page uses past tense for Ward 250 and says 'Ward 250 is step one'.

• The New Atomic Age | Valar Atomics (homepage) (Valar Atomics, 2026-09-29) primary company “we're building hundreds of nuclear reactors on Valar Atomics gigasites”
• The New Atomic Age | Valar Atomics (homepage) (Valar Atomics, 2026-09-29) primary company “to go live before America’s 250th birthday on July 4th, 2026”
• Technology | Valar Atomics (Valar Atomics, 2026-09-29) primary company “Its ready to go live.”

HELD: 'First Reactor online by July 4, 2026' (Valar's July 2025 deck to Emery County): DOE announced criticality on 18 June 2026 (orig-010), ahead of Valar's own 30 June target (plan-004). HELD AS A PLAN, UNCHECKED: '30 EFPD in 12 months' (deck) matches Valar's June 2026 draft (orig-035); no run log is public (plan-006, plan-007). CHANGED: 'in a temporary facility' (deck): the approved papers still plan to take Ward 250 down after about a year of running (plan-003), but what was built is a 55-foot modular reactor complex on engineered foundations with more than 4,000 cubic yards of concrete poured, beside a fuel plant (plan-002), on a site Valar now calls home and is expanding (plan-003, ppl-006); '40 employees for about 12 months' (July 2025) became a projection of 275 jobs and $1.3 billion for a state tax credit (loc-004, fund-017). LATE: DOE safety approvals came about two months behind Valar's own schedule, by the only report of their dates (plan-004). NOT DELIVERED: the Philippine reactor announced in March 2025 (orig-064); the gas-fired supercritical-CO2 test heater Valar wanted done by June 2026, approved for design only (plan-018); fuel from Valar's own line: Ward 250's fuel came from a federal site in Nevada (plan-014). DROPPED: the 10,270-acre Green River gigasite, per Valar, though BLM still lists it pending (plan-017, mine-008). NOT YET DUE, NO FILING: 'Commercial Deployment by 2028' (deck), the 30 MW NVIDIA data center (plan-010), 'hundreds of reactors' in Carbon and Emery (loc-001). CONFLICTING: the date of full power (plan-009) and, on paper, the fuel's enrichment (plan-014).

• Valar Atomics + SRERC in Emery County (slide deck, marked confidential, posted on the Utah Public Notice Website) (Valar Atomics, via Utah Public Notice Website, 2025-07-08) primary company “operates for 30EFPD, in 12 months in a temporary facility”
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02, Appendix B, Table 7 (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company “Initial Criticality 06/30/2026”
• Rapid construction from local contractors at Valar Atomics (USREL press release, Energy Corner) (Utah San Rafael Energy Lab and Valar Atomics, via ETV News, 2026-01-23) primary government “more than 4,000 cubic yards of concrete to date for the foundations”
• Utah Energy Research Board Meeting Minutes, February 11, 2026 (Utah Energy Research Board, via Utah Public Notice Website, 2026-02-11) primary government
• BLM National MLRS Land Use Authorizations - Rights-of-Way (query: customer name contains 'VALAR', run 2026-09-29) (U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 2026-09-15) primary government

Public DOE records found for Ward 250 as of 29 September 2026: the categorical exclusion DOE-ID-26-005 (signed 22 April 2026, posted with a June 2026 web path; csite-020); DOE's 18 June 2026 criticality release; and two DOE Packaging Certification Program documents on rampac.energy.gov (the Model 9979 fuel-shipment Safety Evaluation Report of 20 May 2026 and Valar's transport QA approval of 18 May 2026; safe-010, safe-012). Found on 30 September: the Office of Environmental Management's article of 14 July 2026, which says EM staff took part in DOE's readiness review for the four pilot reactors, naming Ward 250, and in reviewing contractor submittals for advanced microreactor designs, a sentence that does not name Ward 250 (dir-031). Not found on DOE's public sites: the NSDA approval letter, the PDSA and final DSA, the Technical Safety Requirements, DOE's Safety Evaluation Report on the DSA (which DOE-STD-1271 says the approval authority approves), the readiness-review report, the startup approval (signed by the Secretary of Energy or a delegate under the standard), any approval to exceed 100 kWth, and the DOE-Valar Other Transaction Agreement. The NSDA also refers to a Code of Record (document 100437, which it says was provided to DOE with the NSDA) and to a Physical Security Plan and a Material Control and Accountability Plan, which it calls separate controlled documents. The Idaho Operations Office's document server (id.energy.gov) refused our reader (HTTP 403), so its contents could not be checked. An absent posting is not proof a document is being withheld; it is what a FOIA request to the Idaho Operations Office would settle.

• NEPA Determination DOE-ID-26-005: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor (categorical exclusion B5.26) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (Idaho), 2026-04-22) primary government
• Department of Energy Celebrates Second Advanced Reactor Achieving Criticality (U.S. Department of Energy, 2026-06-18) primary government
• Safety Evaluation Report, Letter Amendment of Certificate of Compliance No. 9979 for the Model 9979 Package, Docket 26-35-9979 (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Packaging and Transportation (Packaging Certification Program), 2026-05-20) primary government
• DOE-STD-1271-2025, Authorization Pathway for Nuclear Facilities (August 2025; DOE standard, copy posted by the Nuclear Innovation Alliance) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, 2025-08) primary government “A Safety Evaluation Report will be prepared using the guidance of DOE-STD-1104”
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02 (status: Draft; issued for Public Release) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company

The NSDA's natural-hazard values are 'preliminary', based on 'regional seismicity and generic site conditions', with final values to follow site-specific studies: peak ground acceleration 0.2 g for its most important equipment, 130 mph design wind, 200 mph tornado wind, -20 to 115 F. DOE's categorical exclusion says no active faults, landslides or geologic hazards exist at or next to the site per Utah Geological Survey mapping, calls the region moderate seismic hazard, and names only the Wasatch Fault Zone, about 150 km (95 miles) northwest. A query of the Utah Geological Survey's Quaternary fault layer on 29 September 2026, from a point on Coal Haul Road beside the lab (39.244 N, 111.094 W; accurate to about 2 km), found no mapped fault closer than about 14.8 km (9 miles); six strands of the Joes Valley fault zone lie within 20 km: the nearest (last movement mapped as less than 2.6 million years ago) at about 14.8 km, and strands mapped as having moved within the last 15,000 years at about 15 to 19 km, all with slip rates under 0.2 mm a year. Allowing for the reference point's uncertainty, the nearest strand is roughly 13 to 17 km from the reactor. Flooding: the NSDA places the site on a mesa about 100 ft above the surrounding terrain, and the CX about 100 ft above Cottonwood Creek and outside FEMA-mapped flood areas; the CX notes the Adobe Wash Regulating Reservoir about 0.4 km southwest, which drains through a separate wash that does not cross the site's drainage. Fire and aircraft: the NSDA screens out wildland and industrial fire on a '10-mile separation distance' and aircraft on 'no nearby airports'; the CX describes the site as pinyon-juniper woodland and 'typical undisturbed rangeland', and the state's airport layer shows Huntington Municipal Airport about 20 km away. Water: the CX puts consumption under 1,000 gallons a day for domestic use, with no process-water discharge; the reactor is cooled by helium, not water. Whether the site-specific seismic study was done, and its result, is in the DSA, which was not found in public records. Our check of the earthquake value: the USGS design-maps service (ASCE 7-22, 29 September 2026) gives a maximum considered peak ground acceleration of about 0.21 g for the site on soft rock (site class BC), 0.23 g for class C and 0.26 g for class D; the paper's 0.2 g is close to the rock value, and the paper gives no soil class.

• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02 (status: Draft; issued for Public Release) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company “Preliminary seismic parameters based on regional seismicity and generic site conditions”
• NEPA Determination DOE-ID-26-005: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor (categorical exclusion B5.26) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (Idaho), 2026-04-22) primary government “The Wasatch Fault Zone is located approximately 150 km (95 miles) northwest of the site.”
• Utah Quaternary Faults (Utah Geological Survey, Hazards/quaternary_faults MapServer, distance queries) (Utah Geological Survey) primary government
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02 (status: Draft; issued for Public Release) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company “screened based on 10-mile separation distance and natural barriers”
• AirportLocations (Utah Geospatial Resource Center, FAA airport points, distance query) (Utah Geospatial Resource Center) primary government
• NEPA Determination DOE-ID-26-005: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor (categorical exclusion B5.26) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (Idaho), 2026-04-22) primary government “Elevated position approximately 100 feet above Cottonwood Creek eliminates flood risk.”
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02 (status: Draft; issued for Public Release) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company “approximately 100 feet above the surrounding terrain”
• U.S. Seismic Design Maps web service, ASCE 7-22, Risk Category IV, site class BC, at the USREL site (39.2395 N, 111.0866 W) (U.S. Geological Survey) primary government “"pgam": 0.21”

Valar's home page (read 29 September 2026) says its HTGR architecture has 'an unmatched safety profile and proliferation resistance when paired with TRISO fuel'; the joint NOVA release calls Valar's reactors 'inherently safe'; the state lab's Valar page says the design is engineered to 'remain impossible to melt under extreme conditions' (orig-012). Valar's own NSDA is more measured: TRISO retains more than 99.99% of fission products in normal operation and keeps its integrity 'up to 1600°C during postulated accidents', with a failure fraction under 1 in 10,000 at 1600°C, a peak fuel limit of 1,250°C, and an accident analysis that assumes some particles fail. DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy also describes TRISO as exceptionally robust (exp-001). The Union of Concerned Scientists' 2021 assessment of reactor types in general (it does not mention Valar) finds HTGRs have attractive safety features but that TRISO is 'far from meltdown-proof', releases fission products faster above about 1,600°C, depends on consistently manufacturing fuel to exacting specifications (not yet demonstrated, in its view), that HTGRs are vulnerable to air or water getting into the reactor, and that designs without leak-tight containment may cancel out the benefits; it also says using HALEU instead of lower-enriched uranium increases proliferation and terrorism risks, though far less than plutonium, and that TRISO fuel fabrication is harder to monitor than ordinary fuel fabrication. Ward 250 has no conventional containment by design (NSDA 'functional containment'), and its fuel shipped from Nevada is HALEU (safe-010).

• The New Atomic Age | Valar Atomics (home page) (Valar Atomics) primary company “This architecture has an unmatched safety profile and proliferation resistance when paired with TRISO fuel.”
• Valar Atomics | Utah San Rafael Energy Lab (Utah Office of Energy Development (Utah San Rafael Energy Lab)) primary government “remain impossible to melt under extreme conditions”
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02 (status: Draft; issued for Public Release) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company “maintain integrity up to 1600°C during postulated accidents”
• "Advanced" Isn't Always Better: Assessing the Safety, Security, and Environmental Impacts of Non-Light-Water Nuclear Reactors (executive summary) (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2021-03) analysis “the fuel is far from meltdown-proof, as some claim”
• Los Alamos National Laboratory and Valar Atomics Announce Project NOVA Criticality Milestone in Nevada (joint release on Valar's site) (Valar Atomics / Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2025-11-18) primary company

DOE named Valar on 30 September 2025 in 'the second round of conditional selections' for its Fuel Line Pilot Program, 'to support TRISO fuel fabrication for the Ward250 reactor deployment'; the program uses DOE authorization for fuel lines. Valar's QA program covers a 'Valarin Fuel Fabrication Facility' at the lab, based on German HOBEG methods and designed to stay below DOE Hazard Category 3 ('<HC3'; orig-038); DOE-STD-1271 bars adding nuclear material above Hazard Category 3 levels to a facility until the readiness review and startup approval are complete; a fuel line kept below that level would not reach that gate, and no record read says what review applies instead. DOE's categorical exclusion says the Ward 250 facility 'comprises the Reactor Complex and Fuel Laboratory', and Valar's QA program calls the Ward250 Fuel Laboratory a TRISO fuel manufacturing facility, but the CX's analysis does not mention fuel fabrication. Valar job postings open on 29 September 2026 seek engineers in Orangeville to 'install, troubleshoot, and optimize pilot scale uranium processing equipment' on a TRISO line (a fluidized-bed chemical vapor deposition coater; one posting asks for experience with wet chemistry or high-temperature processing), building on 'completed HAZOPs and existing safety analyses', a Nuclear Operations Manager to oversee 'both the reactor plant and the pilot TRISO fuel fabrication facility', and a material control and accounting specialist for special nuclear material 'at Valar Atomics TRISO manufacturing facilities'. DOE's selection release says each company bears all costs of building, operating and decommissioning its fuel facility. By comparison, Oklo announced in November 2025 that DOE's Idaho office had approved an NSDA for its fuel fabrication facility, the first under the fuel-line program. No NSDA, safety analysis, DOE authorization or state license for Valar's fuel line was found as of 29 September 2026. The Carbon County plan also includes fuel manufacturing (csite-007). The quality program gives no uranium inventory, enrichment or threshold for its <HC3 claim, and the safety agreement never mentions the fuel facility (it categorizes only the reactor, as Hazard Category 2), so the claim cannot be checked from Valar's public papers.

• Energy Department Selects Four Companies for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Line Pilot Projects (U.S. Department of Energy, 2025-09-30) primary government “To support TRISO fuel fabrication for the Ward250 reactor deployment”
• Ward250 San Rafael Facility Quality Assurance Program Description, No. 100474, Rev 02 (status: Approved) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company “ensures <HC3 categorization through multiple layers of inherent safety”
• NEPA Determination DOE-ID-26-005: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor (categorical exclusion B5.26) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (Idaho), 2026-04-22) primary government “The Ward250 facility comprises the Reactor Complex and Fuel Laboratory”
• Valar Atomics job board (92 open postings, public Greenhouse feed), read 2026-09-29 (Valar Atomics, 2026-09-29) primary company “install, troubleshoot, and optimize pilot scale uranium processing equipment”
• DOE-STD-1271-2025, Authorization Pathway for Nuclear Facilities (August 2025; DOE standard, copy posted by the Nuclear Innovation Alliance) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, 2025-08) primary government
• Ward250 San Rafael Facility Quality Assurance Program Description, No. 100474, Rev 02 (status: Approved) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company “The Ward250 Fuel Laboratory represents a state-of-the-art TRISO fuel manufacturing facility”
• Oklo Announces U.S. Department of Energy Approval for Nuclear Safety Design Agreement of Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility (Oklo Inc. (Business Wire), 2025-11-11) primary company “has approved the Nuclear Safety Design Agreement (NSDA) for the Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility”

In July 2025 E&E News reported that Valar had not contacted or met with the NRC and quoted CEO Isaiah Taylor asking why a company that believes the jurisdiction is wrong would engage (csite-022); the same month, Georgia Tech nuclear engineering professor Anna Erickson told the Utah Investigative Journalism Project that Valar had submitted nothing to the NRC, calling that secrecy a red flag, while other startups, including co-plaintiff Deep Fission, were in pre-application talks. Valar's job board on 29 September 2026 lists a Director of Licensing who 'serves as the senior company interface with regulators across DOE and NRC engagement pathways' and handles 'multiple concurrent licensing campaigns', plus licensing engineers and a licensing project manager, and a material control and accounting specialist working to DOE and NRC requirements. Whether Valar has opened NRC pre-application engagement could not be checked: nrc.gov refused our reader (HTTP 403).

• NRC lawsuit could hand states power over advanced reactors (E&E News by POLITICO, 2025-07-23) news “Valar Atomics has still not contacted or met with the commission.”
• Who is Valar Atomics? (Utah Investigative Journalism Project with Utah News Dispatch) (Utah Investigative Journalism Project / Utah News Dispatch, 2025-07-08) news “We can't take your word for it”
• Valar Atomics job board (92 open postings, public Greenhouse feed), read 2026-09-29 (Valar Atomics, 2026-09-29) primary company “serves as the senior company interface with regulators across DOE and NRC engagement pathways”

Valar's NSDA commits Ward 250 to DOE's occurrence reporting order (NE O 232.1), accident investigations (NE O 225.1), ES&H reporting, independent oversight, and DOE's employee concerns and differing professional opinion programs (which DOE-STD-1271 says allow no alternative). DOE's Occurrence Reporting and Processing System page says access to occurrence reports is restricted to approved DOE and DOE contractor personnel; that page describes the department-wide order (DOE O 232.2A), while the NSDA commits to the Office of Nuclear Energy's own order, and whether Ward 250's reports go into the same system is not stated in any record read. No public report of an incident, occurrence, violation, enforcement action or worker injury at Ward 250, NOVA or the fuel line was found in DOE, state or news sources read as of 29 September 2026. OSHA's site refused our reader (robots.txt 403), so its inspection database could not be searched. Absence of a public record is not evidence that nothing happened; DOE's occurrence reports for Ward 250 can be requested under FOIA. Valar's quality program (p.20) cites a different occurrence-reporting order, NE O 232.2; in DOE's own numbering 232.2 (2011) replaced 232.1 (1990s). The NE orders are not public, so which is current cannot be checked.

• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02 (status: Draft; issued for Public Release) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company “Occurrence Reporting and Processing of Operations Information”
• Occurrence Reporting and Processing System (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environment, Health, Safety and Security) primary government “access to occurrence reports is restricted to approved DOE and DOE contractor personnel”
• DOE-STD-1271-2025, Authorization Pathway for Nuclear Facilities (August 2025; DOE standard, copy posted by the Nuclear Innovation Alliance) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, 2025-08) primary government

DOE side, as the records name them: Robert (Bob) Boston, Manager of DOE's Idaho Operations Office, led the federal review that cleared Ward 250's criticality test and described the joint test group sign-off (ANS); DOE's May 2026 transport QA approval for Valar is addressed to him. Jason Anderson, a DOE NEPA Compliance Officer, signed the categorical exclusion on 22 April 2026. Julia C. Shenk, DOE Headquarters Certifying Official and Director of the Office of Packaging and Transportation, approved the Safety Evaluation Report prepared by Christopher P. Cable, manager of DOE's Packaging Certification Program, which recommends the fuel-package amendment (20 May 2026); she also signed the transport QA approval memo to Boston (18 May 2026). Dr. Rian Bahran, DOE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Reactors, was quoted in the NOVA release; NOVA itself ran on Los Alamos's Comet assembly at NCERC, with LANL providing the facility safety envelope and NNSA's Nevada Field Office providing oversight (orig-008). Under DOE-STD-1271 the Energy Secretary (Chris Wright) is the startup approval authority for new reactors unless delegated. Company side: Valar's QA program gives the CEO (Isaiah Taylor) legal responsibility for the facility authorization and the COO/Chief Nuclear Officer oversight of nuclear operations, engineering and QA; Valar's mission page lists Mark Mitchell as Chief Nuclear Officer (orig-003). POWER reports Kiewit Nuclear Solutions was the engineering, procurement and construction contractor. Who signed Ward 250's startup approval is not public.

• Valar's Ward 250 reaches criticality in Utah (American Nuclear Society, Nuclear Newswire, 2026-06-22) news
• Issuance of Quality Assurance Program Approval 0049 (Rev 1) for Valar Atomics, memorandum to Robert Boston, Manager, Idaho Operations Office (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Packaging and Transportation (Packaging Certification Program), 2026-05-18) primary government
• NEPA Determination DOE-ID-26-005: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor (categorical exclusion B5.26) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (Idaho), 2026-04-22) primary government
• Safety Evaluation Report, Letter Amendment of Certificate of Compliance No. 9979 for the Model 9979 Package, Docket 26-35-9979 (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Packaging and Transportation (Packaging Certification Program), 2026-05-20) primary government “recommends approval and issuance of a letter amendment to the CoC”
• Los Alamos National Laboratory and Valar Atomics Announce Project NOVA Criticality Milestone in Nevada (joint release on Valar's site) (Valar Atomics / Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2025-11-18) primary company “Confirming core physics at zero power with oversight enables Valar's path to elevated operations”
• Ward250 San Rafael Facility Quality Assurance Program Description, No. 100474, Rev 02 (status: Approved) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company
• Valar Atomic's Ward 250 Becomes Second Reactor to Go Critical Under DOE Pilot Program (POWER magazine (Sonal C. Patel), 2026-06-19) news “Kiewit Nuclear Solutions served as the project's engineering, procurement, and construction contractor”

As of 29 September 2026: DOE's list of B5.26 advanced-reactor NEPA determinations names only 'Valar Ward250 Research Reactor' for Valar; no NSDA, QA program, safety analysis, emergency plan or radiation monitoring plan for any Carbon County facility appears in Valar's public documents, DOE sources or state records read. The state Trust Lands memorandum leaves the emergency planning zone to future licensing and relays Valar's own safety description (csite-009); it describes fuel manufacturing from HALEU, LEU+ or LEU on site (csite-007), spent-fuel storage only on land Valar would buy (csite-008), and both DOE and NRC as possible regulators (csite-010); Utah's 2026 waste-storage exemption fits state-owned test sites, not a private commercial campus (csite-023). Valar's Castle Country page is headed 'Carbon & Emery County, Utah' but its safety section describes only Ward 250 (csite-027). Which federal agency would review a Carbon reactor, and whether its environmental review would be public, is open.

• Categorical Exclusion Determinations: B5.26 (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of NEPA Policy and Compliance) primary government “CX-271015: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor”
• Castle Country | Valar Atomics (Valar Atomics) primary company “Carbon & Emery County, Utah”

Summary of this file as of 29 September 2026. Authority: Ward 250 runs on a DOE authorization under EO 14301 and DOE-STD-1271, with Valar as its own design authority and no public hearing step (safe-001, safe-002, safe-019); no public copy was found of the documents that define what it may do (DSA, TSRs, DOE's safety evaluation, startup approval) (safe-007); DOE says federal reviewers checked contractor safety submittals for the pilot reactors and took part in Ward 250's readiness review before startup (dir-031); and every approval date comes from Valar (safe-006, safe-027). Where the record disagrees with itself or with Valar: DOE's shipping review describes HALEU fuel for Ward 250, while the only public safety agreement lists 4.95% fuel (safe-010, disc-001); power at 250 kWt is allowed for one hour per run in the NSDA and up to one day, possibly a total, in a later Valar draft (safe-008); the accident inventory assumes 3 MWd against a 30 MWd limit (safe-009); outlet temperature 650 C limit versus 750 C goal (disc-002); worst-case boundary dose stated as under 0.5 rem and under 0.1 rem (safe-013); a 400 m public boundary that cannot fit inside the 20.6-acre lab (safe-014); the NSDA's 400 m dispersion factor is 3.1 to 12.3 times lower than standard rural methods give for its own stated weather (safe-014); it cites 18 criteria of a QA rule that lists 10 (safe-018); its 18-month lifecycle is shorter than its own schedule plus 12 months of operation (safe-009); a state lab director's 'no dose' assurance versus the analysis (safe-015); '72 hours' versus 'indefinitely' of walk-away cooling (safe-020); and DOE's environmental review naming only a fault 150 km away when the state maps one about 15 km away, and saying no major emission source lies within 10 miles when a coal plant is about 6 miles away (safe-021, safe-022). Company claims tested against independent sources: 'unmatched' and 'impossible to melt' go beyond Valar's own limits and UCS's assessment (safe-025); the spent-fuel 'CT scan' claim is disputed by engineers, and no correction was found (safe-026). Public records not found: emergency plan, exercises and any DOE decision on on-site-only planning (safe-016), monitoring data (safe-024), incident reports (safe-033), spent-fuel destination and state permit (safe-023), the fuel line's authorization (safe-031), and the Utah-DOE agreements the NSDA cites (safe-034). Claims that hold are in safe-039. None of this shows the reactor is unsafe; it shows the public cannot check that it is safe.

• Safety Evaluation Report, Letter Amendment of Certificate of Compliance No. 9979 for the Model 9979 Package, Docket 26-35-9979 (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Packaging and Transportation (Packaging Certification Program), 2026-05-20) primary government
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02 (status: Draft; issued for Public Release) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company
• NEPA Determination DOE-ID-26-005: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor (categorical exclusion B5.26) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (Idaho), 2026-04-22) primary government
• DOE-STD-1271-2025, Authorization Pathway for Nuclear Facilities (August 2025; DOE standard, copy posted by the Nuclear Innovation Alliance) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, 2025-08) primary government

Claims tested and found supported by the record: DOE confirms Ward 250 is DOE-authorized and completed a zero-power criticality on 18 June 2026 (orig-010). The February 2026 airlift carried the reactor without fuel, and the fuel moved separately from Nevada, consistent across World Nuclear News and DOE's packaging review (safe-012). DOE's packaging reviewers independently recalculated criticality safety for the fuel shipment and agreed with the applicant (safe-012). TRISO fuel's retention of fission products to about 1,600 C is stated in Valar's NSDA, and DOE says TRISO fuel is 'more resistant to neutron irradiation, corrosion, oxidation and high temperatures' than traditional reactor fuels. No active fault is mapped at the Ward 250 site (safe-021), and Valar's no-fault claim for the Carbon parcel checks out (mine-040); the flood reasoning for Ward 250 is consistent across documents (safe-021). The NOVA test was accurately described as operated by Los Alamos under NNSA oversight at zero power (orig-008). The 1 July electricity demonstration shows no sign of a commercial sale that would cross the EO 14301 line (safe-030). The company's 'passive cooling' design is consistent with its safety documents, though the June 26 test is known only from Valar (safe-020). Checked against Valar's own paper: its core-table arithmetic holds; its 100 m worker dispersion factor is at or above DOE's prescribed default; its 0.2 g earthquake value is close to the USGS design value for the site on soft rock (about 0.21 g; safe-021); Hazard Category 2 matches DOE's standard for a reactor this size; and its staffing of one senior operator and one operator per shift meets the NRC research-reactor benchmark.

• Department of Energy Celebrates Second Advanced Reactor Achieving Criticality (U.S. Department of Energy, 2026-06-18) primary government “successfully completed a zero-power fueled criticality demonstration”
• US microreactor transported by air (World Nuclear News, 2026-02-18) news
• Safety Evaluation Report, Letter Amendment of Certificate of Compliance No. 9979 for the Model 9979 Package, Docket 26-35-9979 (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Packaging and Transportation (Packaging Certification Program), 2026-05-20) primary government
• TRISO Particles: The Most Robust Nuclear Fuel on Earth (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, 2019-07-09) primary government “more resistant to neutron irradiation, corrosion, oxidation and high temperatures”

Emery County's 17 February 2026 agenda listed an MOU letting Valar do site-suitability testing on parcel 04-0019-0030 (orig-046). Utah's statewide parcel layer (UGRC, Emery County assessor data current as of 17 July 2024) shows that parcel as 112.7 acres, north-west of Orangeville; its centre lies within about 0.5 km of the other parcels in the same 04-0019 block. Valar said on 20 August 2026 that it was buying about 110 acres north of the lab from Emery County (mine-018). The sizes match, but no record read says the purchase is this parcel; the layer carries no owner names or addresses and predates any sale.

• Parcels_Emery_LIR (Utah statewide parcels, land information records) (Utah Geospatial Resource Center (UGRC), 2024-07-17) primary government
• Emery County Commission Meeting (notice, February 17, 2026) (Utah Public Notice Website (Emery County Commission), 2026-02-17) primary government “allowing them to perform site suitability testing on parcel 04-0019-0030”
• 2026-08-20 TLA Board of Trustees Meeting Audio Transcript (auto-generated) (Utah Trust Lands Administration (Utah Public Notice Website), 2026-08-20) primary government “currently purchasing 110 acres north of the lab from Emery County”

No correction or reply to any of these pieces was found on Valar's website, whose spent-fuel claim remained online when read (safe-026). Meanwhile Valar calls itself 'very open and transparent' (safe-040) and its staff speak of 'transparency to the public' (ppl-026). A company is free not to comment. Two outlets report no reply to requests for comment, one reports none, and one received a one-line reply; no Valar correction was found on its site as of 29 Sept 2026.

• Who is Valar Atomics? (Eric Peterson) (The Utah Investigative Journalism Project, 2025-07-08) news “Valar Atomics did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.”
• Mother Jones (Kiera Butler), 26 Feb 2026 (May+June 2026 issue) (Mother Jones, 2026-02-26) news “Taylor didn’t respond to our request for comment”
• Donald Trump Is Going Nuclear (Colin Jones) (The New Republic, 2026-05-26) news “she’s not on the board”
• DOGE Goes Nuclear: How Trump Invited Silicon Valley Into America’s Nuclear Power Regulator (Avi Asher-Schapiro) (ProPublica, 2026-03-20) news
• Ward 250 By the Numbers (unlisted company page with placeholders) (Valar Atomics) primary company “These beliefs have led us to being a very open and transparent company.”

Valar's April 2025 lawsuit post, still online on 29 September 2026, says its analysis indicates that holding spent fuel from its 100 kWt 'Ward One' test reactor (planned life under a month) for five minutes gives radiation exposure equal to a CAT scan. Valar's Ward 250 safety paper, the NSDA, credits reactor shielding that 'cannot be inadvertently defeated', analyses fuel-handling accidents, and plans defueling into storage; DOE's categorical exclusion has the spent core leave in dry storage casks. No Valar correction or published calculation was found. For scale: a CT scan is about 1 to 10 millisieverts (FDA), so five minutes would need 12 to 120 millisieverts an hour; the post gives no amount of fuel, cooling time, distance or shielding.

• Valar Atomics is Suing the NRC (The Nuclear Necessity and our decision to sue the NRC) (Valar Atomics (Isaiah Taylor), 2025-04-07) primary company “gives the equivalent radiation exposure to receiving a CAT scan”
• Ward250 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, No. 100403, Rev 02 (status: Draft; issued for Public Release) (Valar Atomics, 2025-10) primary company
• The nuclear fuel cycle (Nuclear explained) (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2023-10-26) “created when the uranium atoms were split apart”
• NEPA Determination DOE-ID-26-005: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor (categorical exclusion B5.26) (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, 2026-04-22) primary government

Valar's public job board (Greenhouse, read 29 September 2026; postings updated 28 September) lists 92 openings: 71 in Torrance, California and 21 in Orangeville, Utah, and none in Carbon County, Price or Wellington. The Orangeville posts include plant operators, nuclear operations engineer and manager, instrumentation and electrical technicians, a site environmental health and safety specialist, a construction quality inspector, a development and construction finance director, and a Material Control and Accounting Specialist, whose post says the job leads the safeguards program for special nuclear material at Valar's TRISO manufacturing facilities under DOE and NRC requirements. Two fuel posts (a TRISO chemical plant process engineer, posted 16 July, and a TRISO chemical vapor deposition engineer, posted 31 July 2026) describe work to 'install, troubleshoot, and optimize pilot scale uranium processing equipment' in Orangeville; the second calls it a manufacturing 'pilot line' and says the engineer will build on 'completed HAZOPs and existing safety analyses' (a HAZOP is a structured hazard review) as 'the process transitions into production'. Set beside the record: in June 2026 Valar told Orangeville the fuel building would make it the largest US maker of this fuel once completed (loc-016); the job posts describe a pilot stage now; no DOE authorization for the fuel line was found in the public record (safe-031); and the local job figures in loc-004 cannot be matched to a payroll. Job boards change daily; these counts are as of 29 September 2026.

• Valar Atomics job board (Greenhouse public board API: 92 postings with locations and descriptions) (Valar Atomics) primary company “optimize pilot scale uranium processing equipment”
• Material Control and Accounting Specialist (Orangeville, Utah), Valar Atomics job posting (Valar Atomics, 2026-07-22) primary company
• Chemical Vapor Deposition Engineer (TRISO) (Orangeville, Utah), Valar Atomics job posting (Valar Atomics, 2026-07-31) primary company