2026-10-05 opened. Caveats: capture is ANS-summarizing-NPR; unit
count/design/parcel/fuel-licensing unverified until a primary or
filing surfaces. Watch: the NPR primary, BLM leasing + NEPA
process, data-center tenants, the fuel facility's shape, and Utah
politics absorbing a second mega-site after the Stratos blowback.
Background
The thread: a reactor startup's gigafarm-scale plan — 456 of
Valar Atomics' reactors on >9,000 acres of BLM land in Utah,
with co-located data centers and a fuel-production facility (ANS
citing NPR, Oct 5; NPR original early Oct). The nuclear side of
the same state's load-growth contest — one week after the O'Leary
Stratos AI campus pitched at nine gigawatts (Oct 1, ai beat),
which is also why this is a data-center thread by construction,
not just a reactor story.