VALAR WATCH
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374 facts · 512 sources · updated 2026-09-30

Fact fund-016

newanalysisconfirmed Utah's ledger with Valar: up to $106.7M in tax credits offered; land sale and lease approved; Valar's known payments about $0.8M
2026-09-29 · fund-016 · Valar Atomics, State of Utah, Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity, Emery County, Utah Trust Lands Administration, Utah Inland Port Authority · maximum state tax credit offered (REDTIF, 10 years, post-performance): $106,737,499; Valar's price for the Emery lab-side parcel: $394,500; Carbon lease up-front bonus paid to the trust: $400,000; Trust Lands staff estimate of Carbon lease rent over 50 years: $35,000,000; water connection fee paid to a local district: $20,000

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.

In plain termsUtah has offered Valar up to $107 million in tax credits, paid only out of new taxes it generates. Emery County approved selling it land at appraised value without bidding, the state's trust lands board approved leasing it up to a square mile in Carbon County for 50 years with an option to buy, and the state hosts its reactor at a state lab. The payments by Valar on record so far, for land, the lease bonus and a water hookup, add up to about $800,000, with larger rent promised in later years. No direct cash grant from the state to Valar was found.
verified 2026-09-29: Re-verified 2026-09-29: GOED packet re-read; figures match. 'Valar pays a few million' overstated the record: the known one-time payments total about $815,000; lease size corrected to 480 acres at first (up to 640). Correction 2026-09-29 (wording review): sale and lease wording now 'approved selling'/'approved leasing'. Correction 2026-10-01 (precision review): wording made more exact against the cited records.

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