Valar Atomics Raceway Energy Campus Gets 4-1 Permit, Not a Nuclear Licence

The vote is a county land-use decision, not a nuclear licence. It lets Valar plan a campus which Valar says would operate separately from the electrical grid, powered first by a natural gas plant while the company works through nuclear licensing, ETV News reported; the application plans 40 to 120 reactors, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. For a data-center tenant, if the campus is built as described, that means the firm supply on offer in the near term is gas. No licence application for the reactors has been reported. Our earlier story on Valar's application covered the request and the vote; this file sets out the technology, the money, the licensing path and what is still open.

The technology

Valar's reactors are high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs). Heat comes from TRISO fuel, uranium kernels sealed in layers of carbon and ceramic that hold fission products in. Helium carries the heat out of the core, and graphite slows the neutrons. Valar says these features let decay heat leave the core after shutdown without powered pumps or operator action, and that it showed this publicly on June 26, 2026, when it shut down its test reactor, switched off active cooling, simulated a total loss of power and watched it cool itself.

That test reactor is Ward 250, at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab in neighboring Emery County. Valar calls it a research reactor, not a commercial power plant. It went critical on June 18, per DOE, which confirmed a zero-power fueled criticality demonstration; Valar says it reached full power days later and made its first electricity on July 1, which directly powered an NVIDIA chip. POWER Magazine reported Ward 250 as rated at 100 kWt of initial test power, a thermal figure, and, citing an October 2025 Valar quality-assurance document, as scalable to 5 MWe, an electric figure; the first describes the test, the second a design capability that has not been operated. Ward 250 runs under Department of Energy authorization through DOE's Reactor Pilot Program, not under a licence from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Valar has not disclosed the output per unit of the commercial reactors planned at Raceway, in MWt or MWe, and has not stated the enrichment of their fuel. Valar's representatives told the commission the campus would use reactors based on the technology it is already developing, according to ETV News, and would reject waste heat to the air rather than use water cooling. The application also asks that changes in reactor design or in the number of reactors stay covered by the permit, the Tribune reported.

The deal and the money

The land is about 640 acres of state trust land leased from the Utah Trust Lands Administration: 480 acres at first, and 160 more once the Utah National Guard moves off adjacent land, according to the Tribune. The county's meeting notice lists the trust lands agency and Valar Atomics together on the application for parcel 2A-1292-016S. The lease term and rent have not been confirmed.

Beyond the land, little is disclosed. No buyer for the power, no power purchase agreement, no gas supply contract and no project financing has been named. The Tribune reported that Valar will reimburse the county for the cost of processing its application, possibly through a deposit or escrow account under a development agreement. Valar told the commission it would not seek special tax arrangements and expects to pay property taxes as usual. The permit also requires financial assurances for reclaiming the site and plans for removing the facilities when operations end, ETV News reported.

Licensing and timeline

The permit carries 26 conditions, according to ETV News. They include industrial rather than drinking water for generation and cooling, with a water management plan; a 70-decibel noise limit at residential property lines; an emergency response plan with the sheriff and fire officials; a half-mile buffer between power generation and homes; and at least three public meetings before any building permit. One condition goes to the heart of the project: Valar must hold the required federal licences before it builds or operates any nuclear facility. The meeting was not a public hearing, and Commissioner Lisa Simmons cast the only no vote.

Several approvals remain before the campus can be built as planned; the Tribune named these among them. A county building permit, with plans such as a traffic plan, would let construction of buildings begin. An air permit from the Utah Division of Air Quality, which regulates gas combustion and emissions, would govern the gas plant. Under the NRC's two-step Part 50 route, a construction permit would allow reactors to be built, but not run, and operation would need a separate operating licence; a Part 52 combined licence would cover both, and Valar has not said which path it will take. The application says the NRC and DOE oversee reactor thermal power and that spent fuel would go into dry storage licensed by the NRC or authorized by DOE, leaving open which federal path the commercial reactors would take. No NRC application for the site has been reported. Valar has given no date for first nuclear power at Raceway.

What it means for data centers

The 3 GW figure is Valar's own target, and it covers nuclear and gas together with no split between them. For scale, the Tribune noted that the whole state of Utah consumes about 4 GW. Until reactors are licensed and built, any power for tenants would come from the gas plant, whose size Valar has not disclosed. Valar told the commission the gas plant and data centers could keep running even if the nuclear licences were never granted, according to ETV News. Valar says Raceway would at first run on its own gas plant separately from the grid, with reactors to follow once licensed, although the application also describes transmission lines and substations, the Tribune reported. Its firm supply depends on the air permit and a gas supply that has not been announced.

Water is the other constraint. The application says the campus would use zero local water, with helium cooling the reactor cores and closed-loop systems in the data centers, the Tribune reported. Cory Gardner, Valar's head of commercial development, told the commission the company would look into trucking water in as its primary source while recognizing that may not be legal, and the permit binds Valar to existing industrial water sources. Valar has also proposed data centers and hundreds of small reactors on adjoining federal land, a separate plan under review by the Bureau of Land Management.

What to watch

The next public steps are undated. Watch for the three required public meetings and Valar's water, noise and emergency plans, which come before a county building permit. The air permit application to the Utah Division of Air Quality could be the first public document to give the gas plant's size. On the nuclear side, the marker is any pre-application contact or construction permit filing with the NRC, or a decision to pursue DOE authorization instead. A named buyer or a power contract would be the first sign of who takes the power.