Fact safe-026
newanalysisreported 'CT scan' spent-fuel claim still on Valar's site; no supporting calculation or correction found there
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.
In plain termsUsed reactor fuel is radioactive; how much depends on the reactor's power, how long it ran and how long the fuel has cooled. Valar said holding used fuel from its planned Ward One test reactor for five minutes would be like one hospital CT scan. No calculation supporting it was found on its website, where the claim remains. For Ward 250, its own safety paper treats radiation shielding as a safety function, and DOE's review has the used fuel leave in dry storage casks.
- 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