E&E News (POLITICO; Francisco 'A.J.' Camacho, 23 July 2025) reported that Valar Atomics 'has still not contacted or met with the commission' and quoted CEO Isaiah Taylor: 'If you believe that the jurisdiction is wrong, why would you engage in the process?', and that the NRC 'is wrongly holding jurisdiction' over its Utah project. The article says Valar joined the lawsuit against the NRC in spring 2025 (orig-016); its outcome is tracked elsewhere and was not checked here. The Trust Lands memo and slides, by contrast, present NRC licensing, with Federal Register notice and hearings, as part of the oversight of the Carbon campus, and the slides list 'Decommissioning bond is required by NRC' among the safeguards (csite-010). NRC's website refused our reader (HTTP 403), so whether Valar has since opened any NRC pre-application engagement could not be checked as of 29 September 2026. Valar's own library post of 7 April 2025 says the company is joining the states of Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Florida and Arizona, with Last Energy and Deep Fission, in that lawsuit, and argues that Congress left small reactors to the states. By the company's account, then, the State of Utah is a co-plaintiff in a suit over NRC authority, while a Utah agency's memo presents NRC licensing as a safeguard for the Carbon campus; the suit's current status was not checked.

• NRC lawsuit could hand states power over advanced reactors (E&E News by POLITICO (Francisco "A.J." Camacho), 2025-07-23) news “If you believe that the jurisdiction is wrong, why would you engage in the process?”
• 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 “NRC licensing is a public process, requiring Federal Register notice”
• Valar Atomics is Suing the NRC (Valar Atomics (Isaiah Taylor), 2025-04-07) primary company “Valar Atomics is joining the states of Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Florida, Arizona”