Valar Atomics Wins Carbon County Permit for Up to 120 Small Reactors and Data Centers in Utah

Carbon County, Utah approved a permit for Valar Atomics to develop a campus with up to 120 small nuclear reactors and data centers on about 640 acres near Wellington. The permit is a local land-use approval, not a construction license. The company still needs NRC licensing for each reactor, and the county attached conditions including a cleanup bond, a half-mile setback from homes, and at least three town halls. Valar has a larger federal proposal called Project Beehive on adjacent BLM land, with up to 456 reactors and about 9.6 GW of capacity. A natural gas plant is also in the plan to power manufacturing, labs, and data centers before the reactors come online, then serve as backup. The first reactors are targeted for 2028, though the NRC has licensed only a handful of new designs in recent years. Worth watching: the gas plant's role, spent fuel storage limits on trust land, and whether the 2028 startup holds. For carbon markets and grid decarbonization, this is a test of whether small modular reactors can actually deliver at scale and on time.