Valar Watch · Fact plan-025

Fact plan-025

newrecordconfirmed Movements on record: reactor by C-17 and road, fuel cleared to ship from Nevada; no public notice of shipments

2026-02-15 · plan-025 · Valar Atomics, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Air Force, National Criticality Experiments Research Center

Reactor: built and heat-tested in Hawthorne, California (plan-008); loaded unfueled onto a C-17 at March Air Reserve Base on 15 February 2026 and flown to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, with the Energy Secretary and a Defense under secretary aboard (World Nuclear News, 18 February); from Hill it went 'by road' to Emery County (Valar's Castle Country page). No route, date or oversize-load permit for the road leg was found. Core test: the NOVA core was assembled and run at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center, Nevada, in November 2025 (orig-008). Fuel: World Nuclear News, citing Reuters, reported the Energy Secretary saying the fuel would move separately from the Nevada National Security Site; DOE's May 2026 packaging approval covers up to 24 single-block packages from NCERC to the Ward 250 site until 30 June 2027 (plan-014, safe-010, safe-012). Neither DOE document gives shipping dates, route or mode, and no state or county notice of a shipment was found (safe-012). Spent fuel: one core, to go in dry casks to an unnamed DOE-approved facility after operations (safe-023); Utah's July 2026 pact with DOE separately contemplates a campus that could accept out-of-state spent fuel (gov-030). For scale, World Nuclear News called the airlifted unit 'the 5 MW Ward250' able to power about 5,000 homes, without saying whether 5 MW means heat or electricity; Ward 250's safety papers limit it to 100 kW of heat, at most one-fiftieth of that, and it is not built to supply the grid (orig-031, plan-018).

In plain termsHere is how things have moved so far. The reactor, empty of fuel, was flown by the Air Force from California to northern Utah and then trucked to Emery County. DOE approved shipping the uranium fuel separately from a federal nuclear site in Nevada, in special drums; no public notice we found says when or by what route it moved. The used fuel is supposed to leave again after the test. One news report called it a 5-megawatt reactor able to power about 5,000 homes; its approved limit is 100 kilowatts of heat, at most one-fiftieth of that, and it is not built to supply homes.

US microreactor transported by air (World Nuclear News, 2026-02-18) news “Fuel for the reactor will be transported separately from the Nevada National Security site”
Castle Country (Valar Atomics, 2026-09) primary company “From Hill Air Force Base it came here, by road, to Emery County.”
Safety Evaluation Report, Letter Amendment of Certificate of Compliance No. 9979, Revision 20 (Valar Atomics fuel elements) (U.S. Department of Energy, Packaging Certification Program, 2026-05-20) primary government “This authorization expires on June 30, 2027, or at completion of shipments”
NEPA Determination DOE-ID-26-005: Valar Ward250 Research Reactor (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, 2026-04-22) primary government “Spent fuel will be transferred to dry storage for transport to a DOE-approved facility.”

verified 2026-09-29: Verify pass 2026-09-29: WNN airlift article, Castle Country, DOE SER and DOE CX re-read; quotes exact. Fixed: the Energy Secretary's fuel remark is WNN citing Reuters; the '5 MW' unit is unstated in WNN; plain text no longer says the fuel 'came' from Nevada as a documented shipment.

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