Utah will have a new nuclear reactor running by 2026, Gov. Cox and startup Valar Atomics announce

California startup Valar Atomics and the state of Utah are partnering to have a new nuclear test reactor operating in the state in one year, company founder Isaiah Taylor and Gov. Spencer Cox announced Friday.

Taylor said the reactor will be developed at the San Rafael Energy Research Center in Emery County, which was purchased by the state last year.

A test reactor is one that is “used for research, training, or development purposes ... but has no role in producing electrical power,” according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Earlier Friday, Trump signed executive orders directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “to reform its culture and realign its organization” to rapidly promote nuclear power and speed up the approval process for new reactors.

“This is a really monumental day in the history of nuclear energy,” Taylor said on Bloomberg TV Friday, hailing Trump’s call to launch new reactors by July 4th, 2026, America’s 250th birthday.

“We are ready to start building nuclear in Utah,” Cox said, appearing in the Bloomberg TV segment with Taylor, speaking with hosts Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu.

“We are in an arms race right now. It’s an AI arms race with China and with Russia,” Cox said. “And we‘re losing that. If we don’t get nuclear right, we‘re in trouble.”

Utah is “well-positioned to do that,” he added. “It’s going to create jobs. It’s going to create clean energy and cheap energy for the people of the United States. And we couldn’t be more excited to be a major player in this industry.”

Using Valar’s term for an envisioned facility with thousands of small modular reactors, Mathieu asked Cox, “Governor, how soon will you cut the ribbon on a new gigasite in Utah? If they’re cutting the red tape to make that happen?”

“We hope very, very soon,” Cox replied. “Again, safety is paramount and we can do this. The technology is there.”

The American workforce has lost expertise in nuclear power, Cox added, “so we‘re getting people ready. ... We want to turn on one of those test facilities by next year. I mean, that’s what the president has asked for. It’s absolutely possible that we can do that.”

There will be “other steps we have to go through to make the manufacturing happen. So this isn’t going to happen overnight,” Cox noted.

“But over the next five to 10 years, we should be deploying. Our goal is by when the Winter Olympics come back to Utah in 2034, that we will have operational nuclear reactors, lots of them from Valar and others right here in the state of Utah and all across the country.”

A spokesperson for Cox’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment Friday night.

Cox announced “Operation Gigawatt” last fall, a plan to double Utah’s energy production within the next decade, to fight what he calls the state’s “looming energy crisis.” This year, the Utah Legislature approved $10 million toward developing infrastructure for nuclear power as part of that plan.

The nation needs policies that “make it possible to build nuclear in the United States again. We need to make innovation possible,” Taylor said on Bloomberg TV. “American entrepreneurs have to be able to go out, test new nuclear designs like we were doing in the sixties and seventies and build plants all over the United States.”

Nuclear energy includes risks and raises issues for its critics and others with concerns: the waste it produces is dangerously radioactive, reactors are expensive and past accidents like those at Three Mile Island and Fukushima cast a shadow on its future.

A more rapid development pace can help make nuclear power safer, Taylor asserted.

“It’s a technology, like many others, like the chemical industry, that has to have regulation,” Taylor said. “But one of the most important things that you can do to make sure that an industry is safe is to do it often, right? ... If you’re regularly building nuclear power plants, iterating, innovating, you’re actually able to build safer and safer nuclear over time.”

TechCrunch reported in February that Valar Atomics had come out of “stealth” mode with $19 million in seed funding and an initial contract to build a reactor for the Philippines Nuclear Research Institute.