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

Fact plan-001

newanalysisconfirmed Plans and operations in brief: one small test reactor ran; the far bigger plans exist as words, a lease and job ads
2026-09-29 · plan-001 · Valar Atomics, U.S. Department of Energy

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.

In plain termsValar did what it said it would do first: it built a small test reactor and got it running in Utah before July 4, 2026. Almost everything beyond that is still a plan: fleets of reactors, a Carbon County campus, a data center, a fuel factory at full scale. Some of the company's own dates and descriptions disagree with each other, and the government has confirmed only the first step. None of this shows danger or bad faith by itself; it shows how much of the story has no public record behind it yet.
verified 2026-09-29: Verify pass 2026-09-29: summary re-checked against the corrected facts it cites; fuel wording changed from 'shipped' to 'approved for shipment' (no shipment record is public); fuel-enrichment difference added. Correction 2026-09-29 (calculation audit): 'fuelled it with HALEU' now approved for shipment; no public record states what fuel is loaded.

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