The Atomic Age is coming to Utah
“If you want energy abundance, you don’t beg permission. You build what’s necessary—and force the world to catch up.”
—Isaiah Taylor, founder, Valar Atomics
From Garage Dreams to the High Desert: The Valar Origin
After a long night following the atomic age, most people thought nuclear was dead and locked away—boxed up by regulators, entombed in concrete, and smothered by paperwork. Not Isaiah Taylor. The Los Angeles founder, code-slinger by trade and fourth-generation atomic dreamer by blood, looked at the “regulatory nuclear complex” and saw a critical challenge. The system, he has stated, was designed for stasis, not progress. So he built a company wired to accelerate, not regulate.
Valar Atomics was born in 2023 with a mission as sharp as graphite and as enduring as uranium: Mass-manufacture micro-reactors, deploy them anywhere, and break open the gates to energy abundance. The model: SpaceX for atoms. Start small. Move fast. Scale up until the old guard has no choice but to get out of the way—or be left behind.
Taylor’s roots run deep—his great-grandfather worked on the original graphite piles at Oak Ridge, and he’s unafraid to take the long bet. But the playbook is all his own: small, high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors using indestructible TRISO fuel, designed from day one for assembly-line scaling. No fairy tales, no handouts—just steel, silicon, and the will to make it real.
Crashing the Regulatory Gates
Valar Atomics didn’t come to play inside the box. Taylor’s first public act as CEO was a broadside: an essay called The Regulatory Nuclear Complex, lighting up the nuclear commentariat and putting the NRC on notice. “If a state wants to test a 100-kilowatt reactor on its own dime, on its own turf, the federal government shouldn’t take seven years to say yes,” he argued. “Progress at the speed of paper is not progress at all.”
The next move: partnering with Utah and four other states to sue the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, seeking to carve out a legal zone for sub-megawatt research reactors—removing the seven-year licensing handcuffs from first-of-a-kind innovation. It’s a wager that boldness, not bureaucracy, will shape the energy future. “Either the law will change, or the landscape will,” Taylor told reporters. “Either way, we build.”
Landing in the Beehive State: Utah’s Atomic Bet
This May, the gambit paid off—at least, in part. Valar signed a landmark agreement with the Utah Office of Energy Development to occupy the San Rafael Energy Research Center (SREC), a former federal materials site carved into the San Rafael Swell’s lunar hills. The deal is simple: Utah provides no-cost space, infrastructure, and goodwill. Valar brings the first privately-funded reactor the state has seen—a 100-kilowatt “Ward One” prototype designed not for grid power, but for learning, validation, and a stake in the sand.
San Rafael is no accident. With its remote location, existing hot-cell labs, and history of high-stakes experiments, SREC offers a blend of legacy and potential. Here, Valar plans to assemble, test, and iterate—a dry run for a production line of “Ward” micro-reactors that could one day form the backbone of off-grid industries, hydrogen gigasites, and digital fortresses immune to rolling blackouts.
“If the West can’t make room for pioneers, it has no right to call itself free,” Taylor quips. Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, called it “a strategic beachhead for advanced nuclear—and the beginning of a generational play for energy dominance.”
The Reactor: Simple, Robust, and Impossible to Melt Down
What is Valar actually building? The Ward One reactor is a miniature high-temperature gas reactor (HTGR). At its core: TRISO fuel—tiny uranium kernels encased in silicon carbide, so tough you can boil them in acid and still not crack their containment. Helium flows through graphite blocks, stripping off heat that never even threatens a meltdown. Passive safety—no operator heroics required. In a blackout, the system cools itself with nothing but physics and patience.
At 100 kilowatts thermal, it’s not meant to power a city. But it is meant to prove that with the right design, fission can be as safe, repeatable, and manufacturable as a jet engine. No high-pressure water, no massive containment domes—just smart engineering, testable science, and the guts to run it in the real world.
“We’re not selling paper reactors,” Taylor says. “We’re selling reactors that work, in places that need them, at the speed the world needs.”
Fighting for a Faster Future
Valar’s test isn’t just a technical milestone—it’s a political act. If Utah’s experiment proves safe and successful, it will give new ammunition to states, entrepreneurs, and communities across America: the right to reclaim stewardship over their own energy future. It will force a reckoning: Should energy innovation be strangled by one-size-fits-none rules, or unleashed at the speed of actual need?
The stakes are enormous. If the NRC backs down, the era of seven-year prototypes is over. If not, Valar—and states like Utah—may simply decide to move without them. “We are not seeking permission to exist,” Taylor says. “We are inviting the future to show up.”
https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6369111804112
What’s Next? Gigasites, Hydrogen, and the Long Game
After Ward One, Valar aims to build the backbone of what Taylor calls “gigasites”—off-grid industrial campuses powered by swarms of micro-reactors, pumping out hydrogen, synfuels, and uninterruptible electricity. Utah could host the first. Local graphite casting and helium-skid manufacturing would follow. Each step compounds: one prototype becomes a dozen, a dozen becomes a thousand.
“It’s not about a single reactor,” Taylor says. “It’s about seeding the landscape with enough energy that human ambition becomes the limiting factor—not supply, not permission, not fear.”
Series A funding is already in the works. Watch for Utah to offer incentives, for DOE to push new cost-share programs, for the NRC to feel real heat for the first time in decades.
Why It Matters
Valar’s fight in Utah isn’t just a skirmish over permits. It’s a line in the sand—between a world held back by inertia, and a future powered by will. Taylor isn’t waiting for an invitation; he’s breaking down the doors.
And if you look past the press releases, past the lawsuits, past even the reactor itself, you’ll see what really drives Valar: the conviction that America—and the world—deserve a future where the lights never go out, the fuel never runs dry, and the builders run the show.
“We are not here to get permission. We are here to build. Let’s get to work.”
What would change in your own life or mission if you decided to “build first, ask permission later?” What would you attempt if energy abundance—and regulatory green lights—were yours for the taking?
Sources: Utah Office of Energy Development, San Rafael Energy Research Center, public statements by Isaiah Taylor, Axios, KUTV, TechCrunch, Valar Atomics press releases, NRC filings and court records (re: regulatory suit). San Rafael Energy Research Center.