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Carbon County Site

The site in Carbon County: where, what, on whose land, under what authority, which approvals, and what the public was told and when.

recordconfirmed Oct 7 (expected): the Carbon County Commission's next regular meeting (first Wednesday, 4:30 p.m.); no agenda was found on the state notice site as of 2 Oct
2026-10-07 · dir-016 · Carbon County Commission, Carbon County Planning Commission

The Carbon County Board of Commissioners' notices on the Utah Public Notice Website show regular meetings on the first and third Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. (3 and 17 June, 1 and 15 July, 19 August, 2 and 16 September 2026; the 5 August meeting was canceled), at 751 E 100 N, Price. Wednesday 7 October 2026 is the first Wednesday of October; as of 2 October 2026 no notice or agenda for it was posted. The most recent agenda, for 16 September, was posted on 10 September, six days ahead; it had no Valar, nuclear or Section 16 item and listed no public-comment period. The day before, Tuesday 6 October, is the Planning Commission. Its agenda (first posted 23 September) has one permit item, the Altigen technology park (no link to Valar was found in the records read); on 2 October it was amended to add a presentation from Valar Atomics about its proposed project in Carbon County (loc-037). Before that amendment, the only Valar item found on the Carbon County Commission and Planning Commission agendas read was the commissioners' August 19, 2026 'Valor Atomics presentation' (about its Orangeville operation, per the minutes); it did not concern the Wellington site or a permit, and no county permit application by Valar appeared in the planners' notices (csite-012). The county's rules for 'highly contested industries' are at the drafting stage, with a hearing planned for November (csite-013); under Utah Code 17-79-803 (in the version read, in effect until May 2026) an application was judged by the rules in effect when it was complete, and a conforming one approved unless the county had formally started changing them first or found a compelling, countervailing public interest (dir-014), and the Trust Lands memo describes a county conditional use permit with notice and a public hearing as part of the process for the lease; the conditional-use chapter of the county's 2023 Development Code does not require a public hearing (csite-015).

In plain termsThe county commissioners' next regular meeting should be Wednesday, October 7 at 4:30 p.m. in Price; no agenda for it was on the state notice website as of 2 October. The day before, October 6, the Planning Commission meets, and on October 2 a presentation from Valar was added to its agenda.
verified 2026-10-02: Read in late September 2026: the commissioners' notice list (every notice June-Sept 2026: all Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m., first and third of the month; 5 Aug a cancellation), the 16 Sept notice (posted 10 Sept; agenda items 1-15, none on Valar, no public comment listed) and the 6 Oct Planning Commission notice (items 1-7). 7 Oct 2026 is a Wednesday. Whether the 7 Oct meeting is held, and what is on it, is not known until the notice posts. Re-read 2 October 2026: no notice for 7 October yet (the latest is the 16 September meeting); the 6 October Planning Commission notice was amended that morning to add a Valar presentation (loc-037).
recordconfirmed Oct 6: 'Jurassic Spark' technology park east of Wellington, 1,240 private acres shown as Mining & Grazing on the county zoning map, goes to the planners
2026-10-06 · dir-015 · Carbon County Planning Commission, Altigen JS, LLC, Duct Tape, LLC

The Carbon County Planning Commission meets 6 October 2026 at 4:30 p.m. in the Commission Chambers, 751 E 100 N, Price (in person only per the notice). Its one permit item is a conditional use permit for 'a phased Technology Park and associated infrastructure located East of Wellington' on parcels 2A-1320-0000 and 2A-1656-0000 for Altigen JS, LLC and Duct Tape, LLC (csite-012). The application's vicinity map ('Project Jurassic Spark', added to the notice 28 September 2026) covers all of Section 36, T14S R11E and all of Section 2, T15S R11E, along U.S. 6. County parcel records list 2A-1320-0000 at 640 acres and 2A-1656-0000 at 600.74 acres, both assessor class 'Commercial' and neither in the state's government-owned parcel layer (privately owned); the county zoning map shows both in the Mining & Grazing zone, though Carbon County Commission minutes of 3 January 2024 record Ordinance 574 changing a 13-acre portion of 2A-1656-0000 from M&G to C-1, which the map layer does not show. In May the county agreed to begin holding a BLM gas-pipeline right-of-way for Altigen, whose stated plan is natural-gas power plants on private land east of Wellington (mine-050). The project lies about three miles southeast of Section 28 and about four miles from Section 16, which the state approved leasing to Valar. No link between this project and Valar was found in the records read (as of late September 2026).

In plain termsA big land-use permit near Wellington is up on October 6: a technology park on about 1,240 acres of private land east of town, where the developer has said it plans gas-fired power plants. No link to Valar was found in the records read. It comes while the county's rules for big, contested projects are still being written.
verified 2026-10-02: Notice page read in late September 2026 (attachments: agenda; region map, one page, 'page 28' of the application). Parcel acres/class from UGRC LIR; government-owned layer returned no match for either id. Distances from section centers. Revised before publication (late September 2026): lease wording now 'approved leasing'.
newrecordconfirmed Carbon County's planners added a Valar Atomics presentation to their October 6 agenda on October 2
2026-10-02 · loc-037 · Carbon County Planning Commission, Valar Atomics, Utah Public Notice Website

The Carbon County Planning Commission's notice for its regular meeting on Tuesday, October 6, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. in the Commission Chambers, 751 East 100 North, Price, was edited on October 2, 2026 at 8:49 a.m. The amended agenda adds item 6, 'Presentation to the Planning Commission from Valar Atomics regarding their proposed project in Carbon County'. The agenda first posted with the notice (a one-page PDF created September 23, 2026, still on the state site as file 1492435) had seven items and no Valar item, and the notice read on September 29 matched it. Neither version lists a public comment item, and the notice says neither electronic nor telephone participation is available. The edit also removed the agenda PDF from the notice. Item 5, the conditional use permit for a technology park east of Wellington for Altigen JS, LLC and Duct Tape, LLC, is unchanged and separate; no record read links that project to Valar.

In plain termsValar is now on the agenda for the county planners' meeting on Tuesday, October 6, at 4:30 p.m. in Price: the agenda was changed on October 2 to add a presentation from Valar about its proposed project in Carbon County. The agenda lists no public comment item, and the meeting is in person only.
verified 2026-10-02: Read on 2 October 2026: the notice as edited that morning, and the agenda PDF first posted with it on 23 September (one scanned page). The earlier version of the notice was read on 29 September.
analysisconfirmed Carbon site in brief: state lease for a nuclear campus approved; no build permits found; a Valar mining claim 2 mi south
2026-09 · csite-001 · Valar Atomics, Utah Trust Lands Administration, Carbon County

As of late September 2026: the Trust Lands board voted unanimously on 17 September 2026 to approve an 'Other Business Arrangement' with Valar Atomics on Section 16, T14S R11E, about five miles north of Wellington: 480 acres now, the other 160 if a National Guard lease is moved, 50 years plus two 25-year extensions, with an option to buy (csite-004, mine-011). The stated purpose is an integrated nuclear energy, advanced manufacturing, critical mineral refining and data center campus: high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, TRISO fuel manufacturing, hydrogen and synthetic fuels, desalination and steel. Separately, a Notice of Location names Valar Atomics Inc as locator of the 'RW 453' lode mining claim in Section 28, two miles south, located 12 September 2026; it is not yet in BLM's public claim layer, which the 90-day recording window allows (mine-453, dir-005). No county permit application, state DEQ permit or DOE/NEPA document for the Carbon site was found (csite-012, csite-020). Whether any NRC filing exists was not checked, and water-right filings were not searched. The only official actions found are the board's vote and the commissioners' 29 June support letter, which was not found on any Carbon County Commission agenda posted for its 6 May to 16 September 2026 meetings (mine-013, csite-026). No departure from the notice rules read was found (csite-005, csite-016, csite-018), but the first public document found naming Valar for the site was posted on 10 August 2026, and the April state review notice did not say nuclear (csite-032). Open questions: waste-storage framing (csite-008), the NRC route vs the CEO's 2025 stance, a one-test NEPA review vs a larger build-out, officials' praise of Valar's openness beside county agendas that did not name the site (disc-031), and a lode claim with no mineral stated (disc-003).

In plain termsIn short: the state has agreed to rent Valar about three-quarters of a square mile north of Wellington (the whole square mile later if a National Guard lease is moved, with an option to buy) for a future nuclear and industrial campus. Nothing has been built there, and no application for the permits that would allow building appears in the records we could check. The deal followed the notice rules we could check, but those rules kept the company's name and plan out of the first public notices, and the first public record found naming Valar for the site came about five weeks before the vote. Separately, a Notice of Location shows Valar has staked a mining claim two miles south. The next steps (a county permit, water rights, state and federal nuclear approvals) are where the public can still weigh in.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-checked in late September 2026 against the September memo (pp. 18-27), the 17 Sept transcript (motion; 'Is unanimous') and each cited fact. Corrected: the earlier 'Valar holds no mining claims there' is superseded by the Notice of Location (mine-453); 'critical mineral refining' added from the memo summary; NRC filing status now stated as unchecked, not as absent.
recordconfirmed No Valar permit item was found in Carbon County Planning Commission notices, 5 May to 6 October 2026
2026-09 · csite-012 · Carbon County Planning Commission, Altigen JS, LLC, Duct Tape, LLC, Valar Atomics

The Planning Commission's notices on the Utah Public Notice Website from 5 May to 6 October 2026 (ten on the commission's notice page) listed rezones, subdivisions and routine hearings, and, until a Valar presentation was added to the October 6 agenda on October 2, no item for Valar, a reactor, Section 16 or the Wellington trust-land parcel. The June and August 2026 minutes (scanned) do not mention Valar. The agenda for 6 October 2026 (posted 23 September) has one land-use item: possible approval of a conditional use permit for 'a phased Technology Park and associated infrastructure located East of Wellington' on two parcels for Altigen JS, LLC and Duct Tape, LLC (no record read links that project to Valar). The October notice says it was sent to a local newspaper, radio stations KOAL and KUSA, ETV Channel 10 and the state website. As of late September 2026 no Valar conditional use application, site plan or rezone appears in these records.

In plain termsBefore anything can be built on the Wellington parcel, Carbon County must approve a conditional use permit (csite-015). No Valar item was found in the planning board's posted notices from May to early October 2026, as read on 29 September; on 2 October a Valar presentation was added to the 6 October agenda (loc-037). The state memo says Valar's site plans would go to the county planning commission for review.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Re-read in late September 2026: body 1652 notice list; October 6 notice and the text of its Altigen map; June 2 and August 4 minutes. Date changed from the future hearing date (6 Oct) to the as-of date of the finding; the claim that every notice names ETV's publication date was not re-checked and was removed. Second check, late September 2026: the notice list for body 1652 shows ten notices, 5 May to 6 Oct 2026; only the Altigen item matched a search for land-use terms.
recordconfirmed No tax incentive for the Carbon campus found: Inland Port areas in Carbon name other firms and exclude the parcel
2026-09 · csite-029 · Utah Inland Port Authority, Valar Atomics, Carbon County

The Utah Inland Port Authority's Castle Country Project Area (adopted 24 June 2024; amended 6 January 2025, 23 April 2026 and 21 May 2026) lets UIPA use property-tax incentives in parts of Carbon and Emery counties, Wellington and Green River; UIPA says its second amendment adds 2,383 acres in Carbon County tied to Tyr Energy power projects, Wildcat Rail and land next to the Savage rail terminal, for about 15,323 acres in all (the adopted plan gives 2,431.59 acres added and 15,370.25 in all). UIPA's public 'Project Areas' map layer, checked in late September 2026, returned no project area at the center or corners of Section 16, and the legal descriptions in the adopted plan (Amendment #3, 21 May 2026) include no land in Township 14 South, where Section 16 lies. UIPA's 10 September update says Valar's more than 100 acres beside the Emery lab lie inside the project area (mine-018); Emery County's commission passed a resolution on 19 May 2026 removing that parcel from the project area, and the records disagree. The state tax credit approved in July is for Emery County (csite-024). No UIPA, state or county incentive for the Carbon County campus was found in the UIPA, state economic development board and Carbon County commission records read as of late September 2026.

In plain termsUtah has several ways to give companies tax incentives for building in rural areas. The port authority counts Valar's expansion land beside the Emery lab inside one of them, though Emery County voted in May 2026 to remove that parcel and the records disagree; the state has approved tax credits for its Emery operations, paid only out of new state tax revenue. The Wellington parcel is not inside the inland-port tax area on the map we checked, and no vote on an incentive for it was found in the public records read as of late September 2026. The port authority's plan says all its incentives must be approved by its board in a public meeting.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Re-read in late September 2026: three UIPA pages (the 'Builds Momentum' update is dated 10 Sept 2026 on UIPA's news index and gives about 15,370 acres; the amendment page gives 15,323); layer metadata (last edited 16 Sept 2026; Castle Country 12,930.77 acres) and five points checked in Sec. 16: no project area. Date set to the as-of date of the finding.
recordconfirmed State boards and legislators heard about Valar's Emery reactor; no agenda found names the Carbon site
2026-09 · csite-031 · Utah Legislature, Utah Energy Council, Utah Office of Energy Development, Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments, Utah Nuclear Consortium

Agendas on the Utah Public Notice Website and legislative materials read in late September 2026: the Legislature's Public Utilities, Energy & Technology Interim Committee heard 'Valar Atomics Nuclear Test Reactor' on 18 June 2025 (its agenda describes a plan for 'a new nuclear test reactor running by 2026', and the approved minutes record public comment on the nuclear discussion later in that meeting; gov-040); slides for the Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Interim Committee's 19 August 2026 data-center item list the 'Valar Atomics-Nvidia Partnership' as an example; the Utah Energy Council's 31 March 2026 agenda has 'Valar Atomics at San Rafael Lab Update', with a general public-comment item next on the agenda (gov-041; its 31 March and 29 September 2026 agendas also list closed sessions on buying, exchanging or leasing real property, unnamed); the Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments (SERDA) board agendas list 'Valar Atomics Groundbreaking' (September 2025) and 'Nuclear Community Campaigns' updates (May and July 2026); the Utah Nuclear Consortium's 25 March 2026 agenda discusses its new duties under S.B. 135 and H.B. 78. None of these agendas or the attachments read names the Wellington parcel, Section 16 or a Carbon County campus. No Valar item was found in the Carbon Community Economic Development Board's notices since June 2025, and the Carbon County Redevelopment Agency's four notices (September to December 2025) have none. For most of these meetings, minutes or audio were not found or were not read. The Energy Council's approved 7 July 2026 minutes, the transcript of its 25 August 2026 meeting and its 29 September 2026 agenda were also read: none names Valar or a Carbon site.

In plain termsValar's reactor in Emery County has been discussed repeatedly by state boards and legislators, in public. Several of those meetings also had public-comment periods, listed on their agendas or recorded in their minutes (gov-040, gov-041, gov-042). The Carbon County site has not appeared on any of their published agendas that we found. What was said inside closed sessions or in meetings without posted minutes is not known.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds, with fixes: the slides' author is not named in their text, so the attribution to the Office of Energy Development was removed; the SERDA September 2025 'Valar Atomics Groundbreaking' item was added. Re-read in late September 2026: PUET agenda (June 18, 2025); the 8/19/2026 slides; UEC notices (6 Feb, 6 Mar, 31 Mar, 'May 26' listed with a 26 June event date); UNC 25 Mar notice; SERDA notices 25 Sept 2025, 28 May and 16 July 2026; CEDB and RDA lists (Utah Public Notice Website notice lists, read again). Second check, late September 2026: UEC notice list: closed real-property sessions on 13 agendas (30 Oct 2025 to 29 Sept 2026), not four; RDA body 3749 lists four notices (3 Sept to 15 Dec 2025), none naming Valar, so 'no notices were listed' was wrong; UEC minutes 1480375, transcript 1480517 and agenda 1493643 searched (no Valar, Carbon, Wellington, trust lands). Date set to the as-of date of this negative finding. Corrected 2026-10-01: wording made more exact against the cited records.
recordconfirmed The only mineral occurrences in the state's mineral records near Section 28 are road-gravel pits and one CO2 occurrence; by law common gravel cannot be claimed
2026-09 · dir-003 · Utah Geospatial Resource Center, Valar Atomics, Carbon County

Utah's mineral occurrence records (the USGS / Utah Geological and Mineral Survey records compiled by UGRC) list six occurrences within about 6 km of Section 28: all are sand-and-gravel pits in pediment gravels (Utah Department of Highways pits 04024, 04025 and 04026 northeast of the Wellington rodeo ground, the Wellington NE and NW gravel pits, and the Soldier Creek upper gravel pits), described as road metal, riprap and aggregate. The CRIB mineral-location layer adds one carbon dioxide occurrence. Federal law says no deposit of common varieties of sand, stone or gravel is a valuable mineral deposit under the mining laws unless it has a distinct and special value (30 U.S.C. 611), and carbon dioxide is obtained by lease, not by claim. No vein or lode deposit of a locatable mineral is on record there in these databases. A lode claim requires a vein or lode discovered within it (Utah Code 40-1-1; dir-004). Absence from these databases does not prove no mineral exists.

In plain termsThe government's mineral records for the area around the claim show only gravel pits for road building, plus some carbon dioxide underground. Ordinary gravel cannot be held with a mining claim, and carbon dioxide is obtained by lease, not by claim. A lode claim is supposed to cover a mineral vein. None is recorded there. That does not prove there is none, but it is the question Valar's claim raises.
verified 2026-10-02: Map layer read in late September 2026 for the area about 110.62-110.76 W, 39.53-39.64 N. Corrected in late September 2026: lease wording restated. Corrected 2026-09-30: The State's map layer cited here (Utah Geospatial Resource Center, hosted on ArcGIS Online) was checked in late September 2026; no copy of it is kept, and the figures rest on the cited layer as it stood that day.
recordconfirmed No 'RW' claim is in BLM's public claim layer yet; federal rules allow 90 days after location to record it
2026-09 · dir-005 · Bureau of Land Management, Valar Atomics

Every claim in BLM's not-closed mining-claim layer that intersects Carbon County was pulled in late September 2026: ten open claims (AMBERIA 1-9 in T14S R8E-R9E, BLACK RIFLE placer in T15S R11E), none RW and none naming Valar. A second check the same day, by legal description, found no claim, open or closed, anywhere in T14S R11E (the township of both the lease and RW 453), and no Utah claim named RW among the 134 Utah claims BLM created from September 12 to September 29. Federal rules require recording with BLM by the 90th day after location (43 CFR 3833.11), so RW 453 (located Sept 12, 2026) is due by December 11, 2026 and may simply not be filed yet.

In plain termsThe RW 453 claim is not in BLM's public database yet. The filing is not yet due: Valar has until December 11 to file it. BLM filings, once made, may show how many RW claims exist.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-checked in late September 2026: a search of BLM's open and closed claim layers by legal description found no claim in T14S R11E (the same search found 8 in T14S R9E, showing the search itself worked); none of the 134 Utah claims created from 12 September 2026 is named RW. Revised before publication (late September 2026): the deadline sentence now reads 'the filing is not yet due'.
recordconfirmed County zoning map: Valar's lease is Mining & Grazing; where RW 453 was staked is zoned rural residential
2026-09 · dir-013 · Carbon County, Valar Atomics

Carbon County's own zoning map service (the county's 'County Zoning' layer, checked in late September 2026 at the center of each area) shows: Section 16, T14S R11E, Valar's Wellington lease, zoned M&G, 'Mining and Grazing Zone' (matching the Trust Lands memo, csite-015); the NW quarter of Section 28, where the RW 453 notice places the claim, zoned RR-1, 'One-acre Rural Residential Zone', and the NE quarter zoned RR-2.5, 'Two-and-one-half-acre Rural Residential Zone' (the notice names both quarters, mine-453). Utah's county land-use law does not give the county jurisdiction over land the United States owns, unless other law provides it (Utah Code 17-79-306), and about 37% of Section 28's north half is a federal parcel; the rest is private land under the county's zoning. What the county's residential zones allow is set by Carbon's development code, which this record does not summarize for those zones.

In plain termsThe county's own zoning map puts the square mile the state approved leasing to Valar in its mining-and-grazing zone, where, the state's lease memo says, big industrial projects need a county permit. The land named on Valar's mining-claim notice, two miles south, is zoned for rural homes.
verified 2026-10-02: Read from Carbon County's public zoning map service at the center of each section or quarter named (BLM survey grid): Sec 16 M&G; Sec 28 NW quarter RR-1; Sec 28 NE quarter RR-2.5; Sec 36 M&G; Sec 2 T15S M&G. Quarter-center points only: zone lines inside a quarter were not mapped. Revised before publication (late September 2026): lease wording now 'approved leasing'.
recordconfirmed Utah land-use law: the county land-use chapter gives no jurisdiction over state or federal land unless another law does, and applications vest under the rules in effect
2026-09 · dir-014 · Utah Legislature, Carbon County

Utah Code 17-79-306(2) (amended 2026) says that, unless otherwise provided by law, the county land-use chapter does not give a county jurisdiction over real property 'owned by the state or the United States'. Valar's Wellington parcel is state school trust land; no zoning provision was found in the Trust Lands statute (Title 53C, searched in late September 2026), yet the Trust Lands memo describes the county conditional use permit as part of the process (csite-015); the lease document itself was not found in public records (as of late September 2026); its terms would show whether Valar agreed to seek county approvals. Separately, Utah Code 17-79-803 (the version effective 6 Nov 2025; amended May 2026) entitled an applicant to review under the land-use rules in effect when a complete application is filed, and to approval if it conforms to them, unless the county formally found on the record that approving it would jeopardize a compelling, countervailing public interest, or, before the filing, had formally initiated proceedings to amend its rules in a way that would bar it (that exception lapses after 180 days if no such enactment results); the current text was not checked. Carbon County's planners are drafting rules for 'highly contested industries', with a hearing planned for November (csite-013).

In plain termsState law says the county land-use chapter does not by itself give counties jurisdiction over land the state or federal government owns, unless another law provides it; the state's lease memo still lists a county conditional use permit as a required step. And in Utah, a project is usually judged by the rules on the books the day its complete application is filed; a county that wants new rules to apply has to formally start them first.
verified 2026-10-02: Statute texts read in late September 2026; quotes exact. The 17-79-803 text read is the version superseded 6 May 2026; the current text should be checked before relying on details. Not legal advice.
analysisconfirmed BLM's claim records show no mining claims in the Green River gigasite footprint; the route there is a federal land-use application
2026-09 · mine-007 · Valar Atomics, Bureau of Land Management

The Green River Gigasite application (UTUT106784007) lists 22 sections: T20S R14E secs. 24-25; T20S R15E secs. 19-21, 25-31 and 33-35; T21S R15E secs. 1, 3-5 and 12; T21S R16E secs. 5-6. None of the 2,060 Emery County claims in either BLM claim layer (open, or closed within the year), as checked in late September 2026, lists any of those sections. The nearest claim activity is in other sections of the same and neighboring townships (e.g. the GFU placers in T21S R15E and GRU placers in T21S R16E, August 2025). The application skips sections 32 and 36 of T20S R15E and section 2 of T21S R15E.

In plain termsOn this site, the company did not use mining claims. It asked BLM directly for the land under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which is the ordinary, reviewable way to seek a non-mining use of public land (see mine-028).
verified 2026-10-02: Re-checked in late September 2026: the case's legal description lists exactly these 22 sections; none of the 2,060 Emery claims (open + closed within the year) lists any of them; GFU/GRU placers sit in other sections of T21S R15E-R16E.
recordconfirmed Valar's Castle Country page mentions 'gigasites' but not where: no Carbon lease, Green River or BLM applications
2026-09 · mine-020 · Valar Atomics

Valar's community page for Carbon and Emery counties, read in late September 2026, describes Ward 250, open houses ('more than 400 neighbors' at the first), town halls, the Emery County Commission's unanimous backing, local partners and news items. The words Green River, Wellington, Beehive, Raceway, BLM, Bureau of Land Management, trust, lease, acres and Price do not appear on it; 'Carbon' appears only in the page's two 'Carbon & Emery' headings and on a Carbon County logo among its 'Public Partners'. The company's document library (valaratomics.com/docs) lists five documents (a Series B announcement, the NOVA criticality release, a pilot-program selection, a roadmap and its NRC lawsuit) and no land, siting or environmental document. The page does say Valar 'is building America's first nuclear gigasites', energy campuses powered by fleets of reactors, without saying where; that text is the same in the Internet Archive's copy of 18 September 2026 and on 29 September.

In plain termsThe company's page for local residents describes the test reactor and community events and says Valar is building nuclear 'gigasites', but not where: nothing on it names the land it is seeking in Carbon or Emery County. That appears in state, county and federal records and in local news reports.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026: word checks and the '400 neighbors' quote confirmed; library lists 5 documents, none on land or siting. Corrected in late September 2026: the first reading missed 'gigasite'; the Sept 18 archive copy was compared with the live page (identical text).
analysisconfirmed Valar has sought its sites by lease, BLM applications and purchase; separately a Notice of Location names its lode claim RW 453
2026-09 · mine-027 · Valar Atomics, Bureau of Land Management, Utah Trust Lands Administration, Emery County

Checking each route to a reactor site against the record: the Carbon site is state trust land that Trust Lands approved leasing to Valar (mine-010, mine-011), where federal claims cannot be staked (mine-021); the Green River and 'Project Beehive' sites are FLPMA land-use applications to BLM (mine-006), with no claims in the Green River footprint (mine-007); the Emery expansion is a land purchase from Emery County (mine-018); the test reactor sits on the state's lab by agreement (orig-045). No mining claim, 3809 notice or plan of operations in BLM's public layers is linked to Valar by name or customer (mine-030). Federal law allows an unpatented claim to be used only for prospecting, mining or processing (mine-022, mine-023). Separately, a Notice of Location shows Valar located the RW 453 lode claim in Section 28, two miles south of the lease, on 12 September 2026 (mine-453); it is not yet in BLM's layers, which is within the 90-day filing window (dir-005).

In plain termsOn the record, the company has not been using mining claims to get land for reactors; it has used leases, federal land-use applications and a purchase, each of which leaves a paper trail. A Notice of Location shows a Valar mining claim, RW 453, two miles south of the lease; what mineral it claims is not stated anywhere read (disc-003).
verified 2026-10-02: Re-checked in late September 2026 against the re-verified facts it cites; the conclusion holds on the records read. Updated in late September 2026 for the RW 453 notice (mine-453). Revised before publication (late September 2026): use-limit sentence restated as what the law allows; lease wording now 'approved leasing'.
recordconfirmed Legal basis of the deal: an 'Other Business Arrangement', exempt from the normal lease rule and its 30-year norm
2026-09-17 · csite-004 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Valar Atomics

The memorandum cites Utah Code 53C-1-303(3)(e) and Utah Administrative Code R850-30-305 as the authority. 53C-1-303(3)(e) (effective 1 July 2026) lets the Trust Lands director, with the approval of the board, enter into joint ventures and 'other business arrangements consistent with the purposes of the trust'. R850-30-305 says the director may enter into OBAs such as lease-to-sell agreements, that 'OBAs are exempt from Rule R850-30', and that OBAs must be approved by the board. The memo says the deal is an OBA because it includes an option to buy. Rule R850-30, which governs ordinary special use leases, says lease terms 'should not normally' exceed 30 years, with extensions not normally over 20 (the director may go longer). The Valar OBA runs 50 years plus two 25-year extensions (mine-011). Staff told the board on 20 August that a purchase option is a 'rare exception' in the surface-lease portfolio (August minutes).

In plain termsThe state used a special kind of deal, a 'business arrangement' rather than an ordinary lease, because Valar wanted the right to buy the land. That kind of deal is exempt from the normal leasing rule, whose usual limit is 30 years (the director can already go longer for ordinary leases). This one can run up to a century: 50 years plus two 25-year extensions. It needed the Trust Lands board's approval, which the board gave by public vote on 17 September 2026 (mine-011).
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Re-read in late September 2026: memo p. 18 (authority); Utah Code 53C-1-303 effective 7/1/2026 on le.utah.gov; R850-30-200 and -305 in the Sept 2025 rulebook; August final minutes pp. 5-6 ('rare exception'). All quotes exact. Second check, late September 2026: plain text no longer says the OBA exemption is 'why' the term can be long (R850-30-200 already lets the director exceed 30 years), or that the deal was 'legal only' with a vote (the rule says board approval).
recordconfirmed Nuclear waste 'strictly prohibited' on the lease, per the slides; the memo lets Valar buy land for spent-fuel storage
2026-09-17 · csite-008 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Valar Atomics, Utah Legislature

The staff slides shown to the board on 20 August list among 'Safeguards': 'Storage of nuclear waste is strictly prohibited on the lease'. The memorandum's terms add that before any portion of the property may be used to store radioactive waste, 'that portion, as determined by TLA, must be purchased by the lessee', and that Valar must buy any portion needed for 'interim storage of spent fuel' before storing it; spent fuel may not be stored on land the trust still owns. So storage is barred on land under the lease but provided for on land Valar buys. Utah Code 19-3-301 separately bans placing 'high-level nuclear waste' in Utah unless, among other conditions, the Governor approves with the Legislature's concurrence (a 2026 exemption for test-reactor waste exists); Utah defines that term by the federal 'high-level radioactive waste' (42 U.S.C. 10101), which covers waste from reprocessing spent fuel plus other highly radioactive material the NRC by rule says needs permanent isolation, while federal law defines 'spent nuclear fuel' separately. Whether used TRISO fuel kept at a Carbon reactor would fall under Utah's ban is not answered in any record read.

In plain termsThe short version shown to the board said nuclear waste is strictly banned on the lease. The full terms add a purchase route: Valar must first buy the piece of land it needs, and with federal and state licenses could store used fuel there for an interim period. Both statements are true; the slide leaves out the purchase route. Utah law strictly limits high-level nuclear waste, but whether that law reaches used fuel stored at a reactor is a legal question the records read do not settle.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Re-read in late September 2026: August slides p. 49 ('Safeguards'); memo p. 22 (Spent Fuel Storage) and p. 24 (Purchase Option); Utah Code 19-3-301 and 19-3-102(9); 42 U.S.C. 10101(12) and (23). Quotes exact. Removed two general statements from the plain text that no source read supports. Corrected 30 Sept 2026: the plain-language text was reworded for neutral wording.
recordconfirmed Sept 17, 2026: Trust Lands board approved Valar's Carbon County lease with a purchase option (per transcript)
2026-09-17 · mine-011 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Valar Atomics · up-front bonus payment to the trust: $400,000; appraised value of all 640 acres ($750/acre): $480,000; staff estimate of rent to the trust over 50 years: $35,000,000

At its 17 September 2026 meeting in Salt Lake City, the Trust Lands board took up the proposed SULA 2095 OBA with Valar Atomics, Inc. as an action item. The auto-generated transcript posted with the meeting records a motion to approve 'SULA 2095 OBA on the terms set forth in the board memorandum', a second, and the chair calling the vote unanimous. Terms in the memorandum: an initial lease of 480 acres (N1/2 and SW1/4 of Sec. 16), with the other 160 acres added if a Utah National Guard lease there is moved; 50 years plus two optional 25-year extensions; a $400,000 up-front bonus; $30 per acre a year in years 1-5, rising to $625 per acre by year 8, with CPI and 25-year appraisal adjustments; and an option to buy all or part at the greater of appraised value or the present value of 50 years of rent (about $10.2 million if bought in year 10, per the staff table). Staff said an independent appraisal valued the land at $750 an acre ($480,000 for 640 acres). As of late September 2026 the official minutes of the 17 September meeting were not yet among the posted attachments.

In plain termsA state board has agreed to lease Valar up to a square mile of school trust land near Wellington for up to a century, with the right to buy it. This is a land deal only: it does not approve a reactor, which would still need federal, state and county permits. Carbon County residents were not asked to vote on it; the decision was the trust board's.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026: motion quote exact (15 words); vote recorded as unanimous in the auto-transcript; terms match the September memorandum (unchanged from August); staff said $750/acre ($360,000 for 480 acres; $480,000 for all 640) and ~$35 million over 50 years. The agenda lists the item as an action item though the memo's cover page reads 'Notification Item 10A'. Sept 17 minutes still not among the notice attachments (last edited 23 Sept). ETV quote corrected to exact case.
recordconfirmed No comment at either Trust Lands hearing opposed the lease; those who spoke on it were officials and Valar staff, in Salt Lake City
2026-09-17 · mine-014 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Carbon County Commission, Utah Office of Energy Development, Jake Garfield, Tracy Rees, Jess Housekeeper, Harry Hansen, Cory Gardner

At the 20 August 2026 board meeting the public comments came from the three Carbon County commissioners, the Utah Office of Energy Development's deputy director Jake Garfield (whose office owns the San Rafael lab and is Valar's landlord there), Valar's director of Utah operations Jess Housekeeper, and one online commenter, an educator, who spoke about school trust funding. At the 17 September meeting the commenters were Commissioner Jensen in the room, Commissioners Haddock and Martines online, another Office of Energy Development deputy director (Tracy Rees), and five people who said they work for Valar, including its public-affairs staffer Harry Hansen, Jess Housekeeper and Cory Gardner; one other online commenter, a member of the state's Federalism Commission, spoke about workforce housing. No comment opposing the lease is recorded in either transcript or in the August minutes; Commissioner Jensen acknowledged 'a few in our community who will push back'. Both meetings were held at 102 South 200 East in Salt Lake City, with online attendance possible; the notices were posted on the Utah Public Notice Website on 10 August and 8 September 2026. In August the board chair said the committee had felt the need to step very carefully, and that the trust would work with Valar 'to make sure that this proposal is approved and that all the parties are satisfied'. The memoranda record committee discussions on 20 and 28 July (Surface Resources) and 25 August 2026 (Energy & Minerals); the Surface Resources Committee 'discussed the need for full transparency' and asked Valar to keep up local outreach.

In plain termsThe state's decision took public comment, but everyone who spoke about the lease supported it: county officials, the state office that is Valar's landlord, and company employees. No resident of the Wellington area spoke against it at either hearing, though a county commissioner said some residents will push back. That may reflect support, or that people did not know, or that the meetings were in Salt Lake City (one speaker from Emery County called it a 150-mile, three-hour trip); the record cannot tell which.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026: fixed the September speaker list (was 'four people' from Valar; the transcript shows five Valar staff plus OED deputy director Tracy Rees). Added Commissioner Jensen's acknowledgment of pushback and the chair's August remark, both from the auto-transcripts. The 25 August committee meeting is in the September memo, not the August one; source added. Lower-level employees who spoke are described, not named.
official statementconfirmed Official claim holds: Carbon commissioner said no county coal output for ~4 years; state data show none after 2019
2026-09-17 · mine-039 · Larry Jensen, Carbon County Commission, Utah Geological Survey

At both Trust Lands hearings Carbon County Commissioner Larry Jensen said no coal had been produced in Carbon County for about four years (over four years, in August) and that the county's one remaining mine, Skyline, was producing in Sanpete County. The Utah Geological Survey's table of coal production by mine (2002-2024) shows the Carbon County mines Dugout Canyon, West Ridge and Horizon with no output after 2019, 2015 and 2012 respectively, and Skyline #3 output assigned to Carbon County last in 2018 (941,447 tons), with 2019-2023 output assigned only to Sanpete and Emery. Statewide output was 7.0 million tons in 2023, the lowest since 1975, and 7.4 million in 2024. The board chair's September remark that this was the 'first year in history' with no Carbon County coal is not borne out: the table shows none in 2020 through 2024 as well.

In plain termsThe commissioner's description of Carbon County's coal collapse is borne out by state data; if anything it understates how long it has been. This is the economic pressure county leaders cite for backing Valar.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026: both transcripts, UGS Table 2.8 (checked again, unchanged) and Circular 139 match; quote exact. 2024 Skyline output is not split by county in the table. Headline wording 'none since 2019' changed to 'none after 2019' (2019 had output).
official statementconfirmed Carbon commissioners: with Valar 'since the beginning'; county agendas read did not name the site
2026-09-17 · ppl-020 · Larry Jensen, Jared Haddock, Tony Martines, Carbon County Commission, Valar Atomics

The three Carbon County commissioners (Larry Jensen, Jared Haddock, Tony Martines) signed the 29 June 2026 support letter (mine-013) and spoke for the lease at both Trust Lands hearings. On 20 August Haddock said the county had worked with Valar 'since the beginning, when they were looking at other states', and praised its public education, 'not hiding anything'; Jensen stressed the lost coal tax base (no county coal for over four years, which holds, mine-039); Martines spoke of the county's energy history, infrastructure and workforce. On 17 September Jensen said the commission is 'committed to allowing these things to move forward' despite 'a few in our community who will push back', and that the 'silent majority' will support it 'as they're educated and learn how safe this process is'. Set beside the record: the commission's agendas from December 2023 to September 2026 name Valar once (a 19 Aug 2026 presentation), its minutes mention Valar only in that presentation and in remarks on 1 July and 2 September 2026, and none read names the Wellington site or the letter (csite-026); no safety document of any kind for a Carbon reactor or fuel plant was found in the public record as of late September 2026; and for the county conditional use permit Valar would need, state law requires approval if harms can be reasonably mitigated and does not itself require a hearing, the Trust Lands memo says Carbon's process includes one, and the conditional-use chapter of the county's 2023 Development Code does not require one (csite-015). The commissioners' long engagement with Valar is stated in their own remarks, in their 29 June 2026 letter ('working with Valor Atomics for over one year', mine-013) and by Valar; no county agenda or minutes recording it before the 19 Aug 2026 presentation were found (csite-026).

In plain termsCarbon County's commissioners say they worked with Valar from the start and praised it for 'not hiding anything'. In the county agendas and minutes we read, from December 2023 to September 2026, the Wellington site was never named, and no public safety study for a reactor there has been found. No public safety document for a Carbon reactor or fuel plant was found as of late September 2026.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read both Trust Lands transcripts (Haddock 09:12 on 20 Aug; Martines 38:08 and Jensen 24:57 on 17 Sep) and the minutes. Quotes exact. Fixed: 'no safety document exists' restated as 'none found as of late September 2026'; the permit/hearing point restated to match csite-015 (state law does not require a hearing; the memo says Carbon's process includes one). Cross-refs mine-013, mine-039, csite-026 checked. Revised before publication (late September 2026): plain and detail restated as what the records show; absence stated as not found. Revised before publication (2026-09-30): on 20 Aug Jensen spoke on the tax base; Martines on energy history, infrastructure and workforce
recordconfirmed Valar Atomics Inc located the 'RW 453' lode mining claim in Carbon County on Sept. 12, 2026
2026-09-12 · mine-453 · Valar Atomics, Carbon County, Bureau of Land Management

The claim's Notice of Location reads: locator Valar Atomics Inc, 20333 Normandie Ave, Torrance, CA 90501; the 'RW 453' Lode Mining Claim in quarter sections NW and NE of Section 28, Township 14S, Range 11E, Salt Lake Principal Meridian, Carbon County, Utah; located on the 12th day of September 2026. The claim is about 1,500 by 600 feet (1,490 feet east and 10 feet west of the monument, 300 feet each side), which is the largest size a single lode claim may take. It ties the claim's NW corner to the permanent monument at the SE corner of Section 32 (see dir-001 for a problem with that tie). The number 453 suggests a numbered series of claims, but one notice does not show how many exist; no RW claim was found in BLM's public mining-claim layer when it was checked in late September 2026 (dir-005).

In plain termsA Notice of Location is the document a company must make when it stakes a mining claim. It names Valar Atomics as the claimant, gives the exact survey section, and dates the staking to September 12, 2026. A lode claim is a claim to a mineral vein or deposit in federal land; under federal law an unpatented claim may be used only for prospecting, mining or processing and uses reasonably incident to them (30 U.S.C. 612; disc-003).
verified 2026-10-02: Corrected 30 Sept 2026: reworded the plain-language text.
analysisreported The notice's survey tie, as written, points about 1.5 miles west of the section corner, outside Section 28
2026-09-12 · dir-001 · Valar Atomics, Carbon County

The RW 453 notice (mine-453) ties the claim's NW corner to the permanent monument at the SE corner of Section 32, T14S R11E: approximately 8,179 feet at an azimuth of 265.3 degrees. BLM's survey grid puts that corner at about 39.5570 N, 110.7025 W. An azimuth of 265.3 degrees is almost due west; 8,179 feet that way ends near 39.555 N, 110.73 W, about two miles from Section 28, which lies to the north (39.572-39.586 N). The same distance at about 5 degrees (nearly due north) lands in Section 28's north half (39.579 N, 110.700 W), so the bearing looks like an error. This is a calculation from the notice and BLM's section geometry, not a survey.

In plain termsA claim notice has to say where the claim is by measuring from a known survey marker. This notice's measurement points the wrong way: followed as written, it leads to ground well west of the section the notice itself names. It is probably a typo. Utah law expects the notice to identify the claim by reference to a permanent monument (Utah Code 40-1-2), so a surveyor or attorney could say whether it matters.
verified 2026-10-02: Computed from the notice and BLM's section geometry; a licensed surveyor should confirm.
company claimreported Sept 10 open house, a week before the Carbon lease vote: CEO spoke of hundreds of reactors in Carbon and Emery
2026-09-10 · loc-001 · Valar Atomics, Isaiah Taylor, Max Ukropina, David Hinkins, Jess Housekeeper, Harry Hansen

ETV News (14 Sept 2026) reported Valar's public open house at its Orangeville site on Thursday, 10 September 2026, for Carbon and Emery residents: small-group tours of the Ward 250 building, food and entertainment. As ETV reported it, head of projects Max Ukropina said Valar has hired dozens of community members and wants to hire more; founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor said Valar chose Emery and Carbon counties after considering more than 22 states, and that Valar aims to build hundreds of reactors in Carbon and Emery counties (ETV's paraphrase, not a quote); he was quoted saying the goal is that many residents will come to work for Valar 'as we grow here in your backyard'. State Sen. David Hinkins spoke of industry easing residents' property taxes. The report does not mention the Wellington trust-land lease the Trust Lands board approved seven days later (mine-011; ETV, 18 Sept), any Carbon County site, a fuel factory or a timeline. When Valar's Harry Hansen (spelled Hanson in that report) announced the open house to the Carbon County Commission on 2 September, he called it a chance to 'come check out what’s going on here in Orangeville' and said Valar planned a town hall specifically for Carbon County residents in late September or early October, date not yet set (ETV, 4 Sept). Whether the Carbon site came up in the small-group tours is not in any record read.

In plain termsAt a public open house one week before the state approved the Carbon County land deal, Valar's founder told residents, as the local paper reported it, that the company aims to build hundreds of reactors in Carbon and Emery counties. The paper's account names no site. So people there heard how big the plan is, but not, going by the report, that up to a square mile of state land north of Wellington, starting with 480 acres, was about to be approved for leasing for it.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read ETV 14 Sept and 4 Sept pages: holds (hundreds of reactors is ETV's paraphrase). Added the 4 Sept report of a planned Carbon County town hall and the 18 Sept source for the site's location. Revised before publication (late September 2026): lease wording now 'approved leasing'.
recordconfirmed Valar's own site first linked its 'Castle Country' page between Aug. 25 and Sept. 9, 2026
2026-09-09 · dir-008 · Valar Atomics, Internet Archive

Valar's website menu is the same on every page. In the Internet Archive's captures, no Valar page carries a 'Castle Country' menu link on 25 August 2026 (captures of /mission, /careers and /docs at 19:31-19:32 UTC), and the careers page carries it on 9 September 2026 (05:22 UTC); there is no capture of any of the pages in between. Every later capture and the live site (29 September) carry it. The Castle Country page itself has one archive capture, 18 September 2026, so when the page was first created is not shown; only when the menu began linking to it. For context: Valar's name first appeared on a public agenda for the lease on 10 August (csite-018), the Trust Lands board heard it on 20 August (mine-014) and voted on 17 September.

In plain termsThe company's own web page about its Carbon County plans was added to its website's menu sometime between August 25 and September 9: after the first public hearing on the lease and one to three weeks before the state voted. Valar may have spoken about the site elsewhere earlier; this is only about its own website.
verified 2026-10-02: Worked out from archived copies of Valar's pages (7 pages, 105 Internet Archive captures): the last capture without the menu line 'Castle Country' is from 25 August 2026 (/docs); the first with it is from 9 September 2026 (/careers).
recordconfirmed Trust Lands memo: Valar's Carbon County site is Sec. 16 T14S R11E, 5 miles north of Wellington, for a nuclear 'campus'
2026-08-20 · mine-010 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Valar Atomics, Carbon County

The Utah Trust Lands Administration's 20 August 2026 board memorandum (Discussion Item 9A) names the applicant as Valar Atomics Inc. and the land as T14S, R11E, Section 16, 640 acres of state trust land about five miles north of Wellington, benefiting the Public Schools Trust. It confirms that the Special Use Lease Agreement 'SULA 2095 OBA' on the August agenda is this parcel. The stated purpose is an integrated nuclear energy, advanced manufacturing, critical mineral refining and data center campus: developing, manufacturing and operating high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) for power, plus possible TRISO fuel manufacturing, concrete batch plants, component manufacturing, hydrogen and synthetic fuels, data centers, water desalination and steel making. It is an 'Other Business Arrangement' because it includes an option to buy the land. Staff at the meeting described the site as about six miles east of Price and said Valar chose it after a multi-state search.

In plain termsThe Carbon County site is not a single test reactor. The state land office describes a long-term industrial campus built around several reactors, with possible fuel making, factories and data centers, on a square mile of school trust land north of Wellington, with the right to buy the land later.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026 (packet checked again, unchanged from the archived copy): memo pp. 23-24 and transcript (Torgerson: 'about six miles east of Price', 'multi-state search') match; quote exact (14 words). Plain field softened: the memo lists fuel making and data centers as activities that 'could' be included.
company claimconfirmed Valar at the Aug 20 board meeting: came to Utah in 2024 and is 'currently purchasing' 110 acres from Emery County
2026-08-20 · mine-018 · Valar Atomics, Max Ukropina, Emery County, Utah Inland Port Authority, Utah Office of Energy Development

At the 20 August 2026 board meeting Valar's head of projects, Max Ukropina, said the company talked to more than 20 states and that in 2024 he came to Utah and met the Office of Energy Development, the Governor's economic office, SERDA and Carbon County. The auto-transcript then renders him as saying 'the first property I looked at was actually property', apparently referring to the parcel under discussion, back when the plan was to make fuels from coal-plant flue gas; the garbled wording does not settle which property he meant. On 17 September another Valar speaker said 'Max came to look at sites in September', without a year. Ukropina said the Emery lab is no longer just a test facility but Valar's 'whole Utah operations', including its fuel facility, and that Valar is 'currently purchasing 110 acres north of the lab from Emery County'. The records differ on whether that purchase has closed: ETV News wrote on 28 July 2026 that, according to Valar, extra water shares would support development on 'the larger property Valar recently purchased from Emery County'; ETV reported on 20 August an 'ongoing annexation of Valar property into Orangeville City'; and the Utah Inland Port Authority wrote on 10 September 2026 that Valar 'has also purchased' more than 100 acres next to the state research center, inside its Castle Country Project Area. Staff described Valar as headquartered in Hawthorne, California.

In plain termsBy the company's own account, it began talking to Carbon County and state offices in 2024, well before the public heard of a Carbon County site, and it may have looked at this parcel then. It is also acquiring county land beside the Emery lab to grow there; one record says 'purchasing', others say 'purchased'. Emery County's deed records would show whether and when the sale closed, and on what terms.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026: overstatement fixed. The headline said Valar 'first eyed this parcel in 2024'; the auto-transcript is garbled at that point ('the first property I looked at was actually property'), so that is now reported as unclear. Purchase quotes exact. Added two ETV reports that say Valar already 'purchased' / owns property there, set against 'currently purchasing' (Aug 20); the deed would settle it.
analysisconfirmed Stated scope grew from a 12-month test in a temporary facility (2025) to a long-term fuel-and-reactor base (2026)
2026-08-20 · mine-019 · Valar Atomics, Emery County

In July 2025 Valar told an Emery County town hall, and its slides said, that Ward 250 would be a test of about 12 months with 30 effective full-power days in a temporary facility (orig-045), and its safety agreement set a 12-month run and an 18-month life ending in decommissioning. The same 2025 slide deck also projected 'Commercial Deployment by 2028', without naming a site. In September 2025 the state's groundbreaking release, printed by ETV News, ended with Valar's own description of itself as 'building America's first nuclear gigasites', and in October 2025 ETV reported Valar's 'current plan' for a manufacturing hub in Carbon County after about three years; neither named a site (loc-034). By August 2026 the company described the Emery lab as its 'whole Utah operations' including a fuel facility, was acquiring about 110 acres beside it (mine-018), had applied to BLM for a 10,270-acre site near Green River and a second site (mine-006), and on 17 September 2026 the Trust Lands board approved leasing Valar the Carbon County parcel for up to a century, for a reactor, fuel and industrial campus (mine-010, mine-011).

In plain termsWhat Valar first told Emery County about Ward 250, a short test in a temporary building, has become a plan for a long-term nuclear industry base across both counties. The 2025 slides did say the company aimed at commercial deployment by 2028, but named no site. Plans can change honestly as a company grows; the point is that the public was first told about a small, short test, and the specific larger sites surfaced later, mostly through state and federal land records.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026: 2025 deck re-read (slide 7: 'operates for 30EFPD, in 12 months in a temporary facility'; slide 6: 'Commercial Deployment by 2028'); August transcript quote exact. Added the 2028 line for fairness.
recordconfirmed Carbon County kept a 'strict' NDA on a $600M factory prospect until Aug 2026; no NDA with Valar was found in records read
2026-08-19 · loc-036 · Carbon County Commission, Larry Jensen, Georgia-Pacific, Valar Atomics · planned Georgia-Pacific wallboard factory, canceled (per Carbon County minutes): $600,000,000

Carbon County Commission minutes, 19 August 2026, 'Unscheduled Public Update': Commissioner Larry Jensen said the commission had lifted a long-standing non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to give an economic update, announcing that Georgia-Pacific had canceled plans for a $600 million wallboard factory on county-owned land because of rising project costs. The plant would have employed 160 people using a gypsum mine in Emery County, and the minutes say the strict NDA was needed to protect the company's plans because the new plant would have closed two factories in California. The same meeting heard the 'Valor Atomics presentation' and approved the joint economic-development consultant (loc-029). A week earlier Commissioner Jared Haddock had said such agreements are typically required by companies, not the county (loc-002). This is a primary record that Carbon County has handled a major industrial prospect under an NDA and announced it after the agreement was lifted, once the company had canceled. It does not show an NDA with Valar: none appears in any record read, and the minutes do not say whether other NDAs are in force. A GRAMA request to the county would settle it.

In plain termsA non-disclosure agreement is a promise to keep talks confidential. Carbon County's own minutes show that a large factory prospect was handled under such an agreement for a long time, and announced only after the company pulled out. That shows the county has used such an agreement for a company prospect. It does not show there was one with Valar; a public-records request for any such agreement would answer that.
verified 2026-10-02: New in an earlier check: found on page 1 of the 19 Aug minutes while checking loc-029. Bears on the NDA question in loc-002 and the open questions.
official statementreported Aug 12, 2026: a Carbon commissioner said project nondisclosure agreements are usually the companies' demand
2026-08-12 · loc-002 · Jared Haddock, Carbon County Commission, Valar Atomics, Southeastern Regional Development Agency · Carbon County taxable value lost over a decade, per Commissioner Haddock: $1,000,000,000

ETV News (14 Aug 2026) reported the Carbon & Emery Energy Collaborative held on 12 August 2026 at the Southeastern Regional Development Agency's offices in Price. Carbon County Commissioner Jared Haddock said the county had lost roughly $1 billion in taxable value over the past decade and that one large data center could provide a tax base comparable to about 4,200 homes. He also addressed concerns about nondisclosure agreements connected to economic development projects, saying (as ETV paraphrased him) that such agreements are typically required by the private companies considering an area rather than by the county, and that another company was looking at bringing industry to Carbon County, with details limited. At the same event Valar's Jess Housekeeper spoke of plans to eventually manufacture reactors and fuel. The report names no Valar site. Eight days later Haddock told the Trust Lands board the county had worked with Valar 'since the beginning' (ppl-020). One week after the summit, the commission's own minutes (19 Aug 2026) record it lifting a 'long-standing' NDA on a separate $600 million factory prospect that had been canceled (loc-036). No nondisclosure agreement between Carbon County and Valar appears in any record read; neither the report nor the minutes say one exists.

In plain termsA nondisclosure agreement (NDA) is a contract to keep talks confidential. A Carbon County commissioner said in public that such agreements come up in economic-development talks and are usually the company's demand, not the county's, and a week later the county's own minutes recorded that a big factory prospect had been under a long-standing NDA, lifted and announced after the company canceled (loc-036). It does not show that the county signed one with Valar: a public-records (GRAMA) request to Carbon County for any NDA or confidentiality agreement with Valar would settle that.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read ETV 14 Aug: holds as ETV's paraphrase of Haddock. Replaced a quote that was Housekeeper's, not Haddock's. Added the 19 Aug minutes recording a county NDA on another project (loc-036).
recordconfirmed Valar first appears on a public Trust Lands agenda on Aug 10, 2026, for the full board's initial consideration of the lease, four months after it was mapped
2026-08-10 · csite-018 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Valar Atomics

The Trust Lands board's 2026 agendas and packets for 22 January, 5 and 19 February, 19 March, 16 April, 21 May and 18 June do not mention Valar, SULA 2095, Section 16 or Wellington. They do name other applicants in agenda titles (for example 'with ST Oil Utah, LLC' in January), and the 16 April agenda lists a closed session, citing Utah Code 53C-1-201(8)(a)(i), on market conditions for possible sales of unnamed trust assets; no link between it and this lease was found in the records read. The lease map was produced on 9 April 2026 (mine-048) and the state RDCC review notice, which did not name Valar, ran from 20 April (csite-032). Valar's name first appears in the notice for the 20 August meeting, posted 10 August (mine-014); the board voted on 17 September (mine-011). The board's notice list shows no board meeting in July.

In plain termsFrom the state's side, the first public record found naming Valar for this site dates from August 2026. The lease had been mapped in April, posted for state review in April without Valar's name or the word nuclear (csite-032), and discussed by committees in July, but the first public agenda naming Valar came out ten days before the August hearing and about five weeks before the vote. That is within the law's notice rules (csite-016); the hearings were held in Salt Lake City, with online participation offered. The board's memo says the committee suggested a discussion at the August meeting and a possible vote in September because its members 'wanted to ensure the full board had ample time to evaluate the proposal and that stakeholders were informed'.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Re-read in late September 2026: the seven 2026 board notices before August (1051443, 1055725, 1058357, 1064897, 1070913, 1079621, 1087073) and the text of all 48 attached PDFs, plus the seven scanned attachments: no Valar, SULA 2095, Section 16 or Wellington. Notice 1100659 posted 10 Aug 2026 10:18 AM. Quotes exact.
recordconfirmed The public notice for the Wellington parcel named neither Valar nor a nuclear use; the memo says other notices were also given
2026-08-07 · mine-012 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Valar Atomics, Carbon County Commission, Southeastern Regional Development Agency, Utah Division of Water Rights

Trust Lands' public notice for the parcel (now archived) said the agency had received an application on 640 acres in Sec. 16, T14S R11E near Wellington and invited competing bids to lease, buy or exchange it by 5 p.m. on 7 August 2026 (with $51,100 in deposits and fees). It did not name the applicant or say what the land would be used for. The board memorandum says notices were also posted in the local newspaper (not named), on the agency website, and sent to existing lessees, permittees and adjoining landowners under rule R850-30-500; that notice ran for 30 days on the state Resource Development Coordinating Committee (RDCC) dashboard and went to the Carbon County Commission and the Southeastern Regional Development Agency; and that no competing offers came in. The only agency comment the memo records is from the Division of Water Rights.

In plain termsTrust Lands' memo says other notices were also given, but the main public notice, the one an ordinary reader might see, said only that 'an application' had been received for the land. It did not say who or what for. Someone reading it would not have learned that a nuclear company wanted the land.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026: notice (archived) names no applicant or use; deadline 5:00 PM 7 Aug 2026; $50,000 + $700 + $250 + $150 = $51,100. Memo notice paragraph matches; quote exact. The date field is the bid deadline; the notice's first posting date is not shown on the page. Revised before publication (2026-09-30): reworded the plain-language text.
recordconfirmed Carbon County's planners are drafting rules for big 'contested' projects and data centers; hearing planned for November
2026-08-04 · csite-013 · Carbon County Planning Commission

Signed minutes of the 4 August 2026 Planning Commission meeting (scanned) record the zoning administrator presenting a map of possible development areas with a one-mile buffer around cities for 'big infrastructure projects' and a half-mile buffer around county addresses, limited to the Mining & Grazing zone. A commissioner proposed a conditional overlay permit for 'highly contested industries' and said he did not want large computer companies to 'fly under the guise of Industrial zoning'; members listed possible conditions (water use, evaporation, heat, power supply, the county's finances). The administrator asked members to list conditions and said he would like a public hearing in November 2026, aiming to finish the code update by year end. Valar, nuclear power and the Wellington parcel are not mentioned. The parcel lies about five miles from Wellington, outside a one-mile city buffer.

In plain termsThe county is writing new rules that could set conditions on very large industrial projects such as data centers, and plans a public hearing on them this November. The minutes do not say whether nuclear plants or Valar's campus are in view. The minutes say the hearing would gather public feedback before the code update is finished.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Re-read in late September 2026: August 4 minutes pp. 5-6 (the rest searched for Valar/nuclear/reactor/Wellington: none). Quote exact. The speaking commissioner is named in the minutes; here described by role.
recordconfirmed Board committees discussed the lease before the vote, as they did other deals; no notices of the board's committee meetings were found on the state notice website
2026-07-28 · csite-017 · Utah Trust Lands Administration

The memoranda say the Trust Lands board's Surface Resources Committee discussed the Valar lease on 20 July 2026 and again on 28 July, when Valar presented, and that the Energy & Minerals Committee discussed it on 25 August; the committees raised safety, water, radioactive materials, outreach and 'the need for full transparency', and directed staff to discuss some of the proposed financial terms further with Valar (mine-014). Committee review before a board vote was not special to this lease: the board's approved minutes for 20 August say two geothermal agreements and a minerals agreement approved that day were 'reviewed in the Energy and Minerals Committee meeting in July', and that a development deal at St. George Regional Airport was reviewed at the Real Estate Committee's July meeting; the same minutes note the Valar lease's two July committee reviews. As of late September 2026, the Trust Lands board's page on the Utah Public Notice Website lists 2026 board meetings only (April, May, June, August and September) and no committee meetings. As of late September 2026, no agenda, minutes or recording of these committee meetings was found on the Utah Public Notice Website or in the board packets read. Whether board committees are 'public bodies' under the Open and Public Meetings Act (whose definition includes, among other tests, being supported in whole or part by tax revenue and being 'vested with the authority to make decisions regarding the public's business') is a legal question the records read do not answer.

In plain termsSome of the detailed discussion of the Wellington lease, including the company's presentation and the call for transparency, happened in two board committees whose meetings were not found on the state's public notice site. The board handled other deals the same way: its minutes show other agreements going through board committees first, and no notices of those committee meetings were found either; its memo later summarized the Valar discussions. The full board's votes were public; no agenda or minutes of the committee work on the deal were found in the public records searched. A records request would show whether minutes exist.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds, with two fixes: 'renegotiate' overstated the memo ('further discussion ... regarding some of the proposed financial terms'), and an unsourced remark on how Trust Lands is funded was removed. Re-read in late September 2026: memo pp. 25-26; PMN entity 30 body list (SITLA Board of Trustees, SITLA Wildlife Advisory Committee, Trust Lands Administration Board of Trustees) and body 69/8609 notice lists (2026 board meetings only; none in July).
recordconfirmed The Wellington notice ran in ETV July 15-29 and named no use; of three other Trust Lands notices read from that paper, two named a use and one gave only a lease number
2026-07-15 · loc-032 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, ETV News, Valar Atomics · earnest money required of any competing bidder: $50,000

The newspaper notice the Trust Lands memo mentions without naming the paper (csite-005, mine-012) matches ETV News's 'TRUST LANDS OPPORTUNITY', published 15, 22 and 29 July 2026: Trust Lands 'has received an application on the following property near Wellington' (T14S R11E, Section 16, about 640 acres) and will take bids to lease, buy or exchange it by 5 p.m. on 7 August 2026; a bidder must submit a bid, a development plan and an application with $50,000 earnest money and $1,100 in fees; details by phone or at the Monticello office. It names no applicant, no use and no lease number (the lease was already numbered SULA 2095 and mapped by 9 April, mine-048). The first printing gave 23 days to prepare a competing bid and development plan; the web notice had gone up on 8 July (csite-005). The same agency's notices in the same paper do sometimes state the use: a 19 August 2026 notice for 319.55 acres of Carbon County trust land says the application is 'for a commercial photovoltaic solar power generation project', and a 24 June 2026 notice describes an application to remove sand and gravel; a December 2025 Emery notice gives no use but cites its lease number (SULA 2087). Those three notices ran under the heading 'PUBLIC NOTICE' and directed applications to the agency's Salt Lake City office; the Wellington notice ran under the heading 'TRUST LANDS OPPORTUNITY', directed bids to its Southeastern Area Office in Monticello, and was the only one of the four to ask for a development plan and earnest money. The one that gave no use, SULA 2087, is, like the Wellington lease (SULA 2095), a special use lease. Trust Lands' rule requires a notice to include other information that may create interest, so long as it does not breach the confidentiality of the application (csite-005); the record does not say whether the use was treated as confidential, or why the Wellington notice omitted it.

In plain termsThe state did advertise the Wellington land in the local paper, three times in July 2026. But the ad said only that someone had applied for the square mile and that others could bid, with no word of who, or that the plan was a nuclear campus. A month later the same agency, in the same paper, told readers another application was for a solar farm; that notice came from a different Trust Lands office, and a December 2025 notice for an Emery lease gave no use either. Trust Lands' rule let the Wellington ad leave out who and what (csite-005), but a reader could not have known from it what was coming.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read all four legal notices: holds (fees $700+$250+$150; 23 days to the 7 Aug deadline). Plain field no longer asserts the notice 'met the rules' as our finding; it cites the rule record.
recordconfirmed Utah approved up to $106.7M in tax credits for Valar in July 2026 (Emery County); like all 13 tax-credit applicants the board took up from April to September 2026, it was not named on the public agenda
2026-07-09 · csite-024 · Governor's Office of Economic Development, Valar Atomics, Emery County · maximum REDTIF post-performance tax credit, 10 years: $106,737,499; projected capital investment (Emery County): $1,299,110,000

The Board of the Governor's Office of Economic Development approved, by unanimous consent on 9 July 2026, a REDTIF post-performance refundable tax credit for Valar Atomics Inc. of up to $106,737,499: 50% of new state tax revenue for 10 years, with projected capital investment of $1,299,110,000, 275 jobs at an average wage of $137,567, in Emery County. The credit is paid only after new revenue is receipted, is 'site specific and subject to local incentive participation', and needs a local incentive approved by the GOED Incentives Committee. The notice and agenda, posted 7 July, described the item only as a company in 'the energy and advanced manufacturing industry' (the same agenda named the three companies up for economic development zones, but not the other tax-credit applicant); every agenda of the board from April to September 2026 described its tax-credit applicants only by industry (13 companies in five meetings, up to about $549 million in all, from a food manufacturer to a lithium project; Valar's share was about 19%), and the materials naming them were posted during or after each meeting; the board materials naming Valar were attached to the notice at 1:00 p.m. on 9 July, after the meeting, which was scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon. Utah's records law lets agencies protect records that would reveal incentive negotiations if disclosure would cause the company actual economic harm or put the agency at a competitive disadvantage (63G-2-305(35)), and the July 9 minutes carry that label. Per the minutes, Valar's representatives spoke of a 'waterless data center in Orangeville' and plans 'to install additional commercial units in the area', and an Emery County commissioner spoke in support. As of late September 2026, no state incentive record for the Carbon County campus was found in the GOED board records read.

In plain termsThe state approved giving Valar back up to about $107 million in state taxes over ten years, paid only out of new state tax revenue and tied to job and wage targets; the board materials project a $1.3 billion investment and 275 jobs in Emery County. Per the minutes, Valar's representatives spoke of a data center in Orangeville and more commercial units in the area. Before the vote, the public agenda said only that an energy company was up for approval; the documents naming Valar were posted after the meeting. The board's agendas described all 13 of its tax-credit applicants from April to September 2026 only by industry, and the documents naming them were posted during or after each meeting. State law allows incentive talks to be kept confidential in some cases. The Carbon County campus is not part of this incentive.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds, with one addition. Re-read in late September 2026: July 9 notice (posted 2026-07-07 15:18; attachments: agenda and June minutes added 7 July, board materials added 9 July 13:00, audio 13:05); agenda docx (no company named for incentives); board materials pp. 1-3; July 9 minutes (docx headed 'Incentive Committee Meeting Minutes' and 'PROTECTED BY 63G-2-305(35)', attached to the Sept 10 notice); Utah Code 63G-2-305(35). Unsourced expansion of 'REDTIF' removed. Named individuals other than officials are Valar staff speaking publicly for the company. Corrected 2026-09-30: reworded the plain-language text.
recordconfirmed The notice rule protects the application's confidentiality; Trust Lands' Wellington notice named neither Valar nor any use
2026-07-08 · csite-005 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Carbon County Commission, Southeastern Regional Development Agency, Resource Development Coordinating Committee

Rule R850-30-500 requires Trust Lands, on accepting a special use lease application, to solicit competing interest by giving at least 30 days' notice by certified mail to the county's legislative body, lessees or permittees of record and adjoining landowners; it may add other methods. The notice must describe the land and its location, give the agency contact, and must also include any other information 'that may create interest in the subject property' that 'does not violate the confidentiality of the initial application'. R850-30-150 also requires lease proposals to go to the state Resource Development Coordinating Committee (RDCC). The memorandum says Trust Lands posted notices in the local newspaper and on its website, sent them to lessees, permittees and adjoining landowners 'per agency rule R-850-30-500', posted the proposal on the RDCC dashboard for 30 days and sent it to the Carbon County Commission and SERDA. The web notice (which Trust Lands' own site now marks as archived) matches this format: it says an application was received for Section 16 near Wellington and invites bids to lease, buy or exchange by 7 August 2026, naming no applicant or use; it points inquiries to the Southeastern Area Office in Monticello. The notice page itself records a publication date of 8 July 2026 (last modified 9 August), 30 days before the bid deadline. Because OBAs are exempt from R850-30 (csite-004), our reading is that this notice was given by choice rather than by requirement; the memo does not say. The certified-mail list, the newspaper's affidavit and the RDCC posting's recipients were not in the records read; a matching Trust Lands notice ran in ETV News on 15, 22 and 29 July 2026 (loc-032).

In plain termsWhat the notice told readers was limited: it said only that someone had applied for the land near Wellington, and invited competing bids. That matches the state's rule, which calls for extra details that may draw interest, but only ones that keep the application confidential. The rule requires notice by certified mail to the county commission, existing users of the land and neighboring landowners; Trust Lands says it also posted the notice in a local newspaper and on its website. So the silence about who and what fits the rule rather than departing from it. Whether people were fairly informed is a separate question from whether the rule was followed (csite-018).
verified 2026-10-02: Holds, with the plain text corrected (the certified-mail list is the rule's minimum, not the only notice) and the date set to the notice's posting. Re-read in late September 2026: rulebook R850-30-150, -305, -500; memo p. 20 ('Notice and Advertising'); the notice page's own published and modified dates (8 July and 9 August 2026, UTC). Quotes exact.
recordconfirmed Carbon commissioners signed a June 29 support letter; no Carbon County agenda from May to mid-Sept shows it or the site
2026-06-29 · mine-013 · Carbon County Commission, Larry Jensen, Tony Martines, Jared Haddock, Valar Atomics

The Trust Lands packets include a letter on Carbon County Board of Commissioners letterhead dated 29 June 2026, addressed to the 'SITLA Board of Trustees' and signed by Commissioners Tony Martines, Jared Haddock and Larry Jensen, supporting Valar's desire to locate 'north of Wellington on SITLA lands' and saying the county had worked with Valar for over a year; it does not mention nuclear power or a reactor. The commission's agendas and minutes posted on the Utah Public Notice Website for its meetings of 6 May through 16 September 2026 (most are scanned images; the 5 August meeting was canceled; 16 September minutes not yet posted as of 1 October 2026) contain no item approving that letter and no item on the Wellington site. Valar appears in commissioners' remarks on 1 July 2026 (celebrating the Emery reactor and a data-center partnership), in a 19 August 2026 'Valor Atomics presentation' about the Orangeville operation and planned public events (the minutes add that commissioners highlighted the tax benefits 'the plant will bring', without saying where), and in a 2 September 2026 announcement of an Orangeville open house and a planned Carbon County town hall. By contrast, Emery County put its support letter for Valar on a public agenda (17 February 2026, orig-046).

In plain termsThe county's support for the Carbon site was put in writing and sent to the state, but we found no public county meeting where it was discussed or voted on before it was sent. Minutes of the meetings of 7 January to 15 April 2026, also read, show no such item either. Whether a vote was needed is a legal question for the county; the county clerk's records would show how the letter was approved.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-checked in late September 2026: letter read in the September packet (p. 28); all 17 Carbon agendas and minutes on file re-read for Valar/Valor/atomic/nuclear/Wellington/SITLA/trust/letter; only the items described appear. The archived Aug 19 minutes match the live file. carbon.utah.gov was not searched for the letter.
recordconfirmed May 2026: Carbon County voted to enter 'the beginning stages' of a BLM gas-pipeline right-of-way for Altigen plants east of Wellington
2026-05-20 · mine-050 · Carbon County Commission, Altigen, Bureau of Land Management

The Carbon County Commission's 20 May 2026 agenda listed, for possible approval, a partnership with ALTIGEN ('Jurassic Spark Project') on a natural gas pipeline right-of-way across BLM land. The minutes (scanned) say Altigen intends to build natural gas power plants on private property east of Wellington; that BLM offered Carbon County the option to hold the right-of-way for a pipeline across the North Coal Creek area; that Altigen will bear all environmental work, costs, maintenance and erosion control, and the county is not paying; and that the commission voted to enter 'the beginning stages' of the right-of-way. No BLM right-of-way case naming Altigen or Carbon County created since June 2025 appears in BLM's public layer as of late September 2026. No record read links this project to Valar.

In plain termsA separate energy project, gas-fired power plants east of Wellington with a pipeline across federal land, got early county approval in an open public meeting in May 2026.
verified 2026-10-02: Found during verification in late September 2026 while re-reading the May-September Carbon minutes for mine-013; archived copies checked again and unchanged. Updated in late September 2026.
recordconfirmed A 2026 Utah law makes counties notify water regulators before approving a large data center; it is not public notice
2026-05-06 · csite-025 · Utah Legislature, Utah Division of Water Rights

H.B. 76 (2026, 'Data Center Water Transparency Amendments', effective 6 May 2026) enacted Utah Code 73-5-8.3. A 'large data center' is one withdrawing 75 acre-feet or more of water a year, with at least 10,000 square feet of buildings. Before a county or city land use authority approves a land use application for a new one, it must notify the Division of Water Rights, the Division of Water Quality and the relevant water provider by mail or email. On or after 1 July 2026 the operator must, at least 90 days but no sooner than 360 days before construction, tell the water provider its expected water use and report to the Division of Water Rights; after opening it reports yearly, and the Division publishes each new center's withdrawals. The Carbon campus plan includes data centers (mine-010); whether any would reach 75 acre-feet a year is not stated.

In plain termsIf the Carbon campus includes a big water-using data center, a 2026 state law requires the county to tell the state's water agencies before approving it, and requires the data center's operator to report expected and actual water use, which the state then publishes. That gives the public a later window into water use, but the law does not itself require a public hearing or public notice.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds, with the date corrected: the bill takes effect 6 May 2026 (Section 3); 1 July 2026 is when the operator's reporting duty starts. Re-read in late September 2026: H.B. 76 enrolled copy and the LRGC 2026 NRAE summary (May 20, 2026). Quote exact.
recordconfirmed Valar's Utah reactor cleared federal environmental review with a categorical exclusion, so no EA or EIS was required
2026-04-22 · csite-020 · U.S. Department of Energy, DOE Idaho Operations Office, Valar Atomics

DOE's NEPA determination DOE-ID-26-005, digitally signed on 22 April 2026 by a DOE NEPA compliance officer (the PDF's web address places its upload in June 2026), categorically excluded 'Valar Ward250 Research Reactor' at the Utah San Rafael Energy Research Center from further NEPA review under category B5.26. DOE created B5.26 by a Federal Register notice effective 2 February 2026 (comments were taken afterwards, to 4 March), under Executive Order 14301; it covers 'Authorization, siting, construction, operation, reauthorization, and decommissioning of advanced nuclear reactors' if DOE finds the risk of offsite release is sufficiently reduced and wastes can be managed, and says a project 'may include multiple reactors'. The notice states that reactors 'developed for additional purposes, such as power production and industrial applications' are also appropriate for it. DOE's B5.26 listing showed five determinations in late September 2026. No DOE NEPA document for a Carbon County site was found in the records read as of late September 2026.

In plain termsFederal law (NEPA) makes agencies study environmental effects before approving projects, for larger actions in a public environmental assessment or impact statement. A 'categorical exclusion' is a category for actions the agency has decided are normally minor: no environmental assessment or impact statement, and no comment period on the project. It is an environmental-review decision under NEPA, separate from DOE's nuclear-safety approval of the reactor (safety analysis, operating limits, readiness review, startup approval; dir-031). DOE created one for advanced reactors in February 2026 and used it for Valar's Emery County reactor in April. It is written broadly enough to cover power reactors and multi-reactor sites. If a Carbon County reactor goes the DOE route, neighbors may get no federal environmental report to comment on at all; if it goes through the NRC, a public review would be expected.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Re-read in late September 2026: CX-271015 (7 pages; signature dated 2026.04.22); Federal Register 2026-02071 (91 FR 4550; effective 2 Feb 2026, comments to 4 Mar) full text; DOE's B5.26 listing (Groves-1, SPARC, Ward250, Deployable Energy, Aalo-X). Quotes exact. 'Idaho Operations' removed: the document gives only the DOE-ID number. Second check, late September 2026: the notice is now cited from DOE's own posted copy, read in full: effective 2 Feb 2026, comments due 4 Mar 2026, B5.26 text, 'multiple reactors within a nuclear facility', 'additional purposes, such as power production and industrial applications'. Revised before publication (2026-09-30): reworded the plain-language text. Revised before publication (2026-10-01): wording made more exact against the cited records.
recordconfirmed The state's first public notice of the lease (RDCC, April 20, 2026) called it an industrial and power project; no nuclear, no name
2026-04-20 · csite-032 · Resource Development Coordinating Committee, Utah Trust Lands Administration, Carbon County

The Resource Development Coordinating Committee's public project layer (the data behind rdcc.utah.gov) holds project 87203, 'SULA 2095 - Lease Agreement with possible option to purchase', sponsor Trust Lands Administration, created 20 April 2026 with a comment deadline of 18 May 2026, legal description 'T14S, R11E, Sec. 16 N2, SW4', Carbon County, local government contacted 'Y' on 20 April 2026, status 'State Comment Published'. Its abstract says TLA received a lease application 'from a private entity' for 'a large-scale industrial project' including manufacturing, 'power generation infrastructure' and other industrial uses, with a possible purchase option, on 480 acres. It lists impacts as permanent land-use change, landscape change, traffic and 'noise associated with manufacturing and power generation'. It does not name Valar or mention nuclear reactors, fuel or radioactive material. This broadly matches the memo's statement that the proposal ran 30 days on the RDCC dashboard (the layer's comment period, 20 April to 18 May, is 28 days) and went to the county (csite-005); the only comment the memo records is from the Division of Water Rights (mine-012). The same layer holds the Guard lease on the section, 'SULA 1321 - Utah National Guard Training Area' (project 588), whose document link is filed under 2001.

In plain termsRDCC is the state's clearinghouse where agencies and local governments can comment on projects on state land. The Wellington lease was posted there from 20 April to 18 May 2026, and Carbon County was formally contacted on 20 April, more than two months before the commissioners signed their letter of support. The posting described a big industrial and power-generation project, which is accurate as far as it goes, but did not say the power would be nuclear or who the company was. A reader of the state dashboard would not have known this was a nuclear campus.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Checked again in late September 2026: RDCC public layer, projects 87203 (created 2026-04-20 17:14 UTC; comment deadline 2026-05-18; local government contacted Y on 2026-04-20; status 'State Comment Published') and 588. Abstract quote exact. The 2001 date for SULA 1321 now rests only on the record's document link, as stated.
recordconfirmed The state's lease map for SULA 2095 was produced on 9 April 2026, four months before the bid deadline
2026-04-09 · mine-048 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Valar Atomics

The 'Special Use Lease Agreement No. 2095' map attached to both Trust Lands board packets (August packet p. 35, September packet p. 29) outlines the 480-acre N1/2 and SW1/4 of Sec. 16, T14S R11E, and its footer reads 'Produced: April 09, 2026'. So by 9 April 2026 Trust Lands had given the lease a number and mapped its area. That is about four months before the 7 August 2026 deadline in the agency's public notice, which named no applicant and no use (mine-012), and about eleven and a half weeks before the Carbon County Commission's 29 June support letter (mine-013). The records read do not show when Valar's application was filed or when the public notice was first posted.

In plain termsA map's 'produced' date is the day the state made it. This one shows the state was already preparing this particular lease, under its lease number, by early April 2026. The public notice inviting competing offers came later and did not say who had applied or what the land was for. When the application arrived and when the notice first ran are in Trust Lands' files, which a records request can get.
verified 2026-10-02: Found during verification in late September 2026: map footers read from both packets.
company claimconfirmed At the April 2026 land-sale hearing Valar promised 'to be open with all plans'; its Carbon site was not named
2026-04-07 · gov-038 · Valar Atomics, Cory Gardner, Keven Jensen, Dennis Worwood, Emery County Commission, Utah Trust Lands Administration

Emery County's minutes of the 7 April 2026 public hearing on selling parcel 04-0019-0030 record Valar's commercial development representative, Cory Gardner (spelled 'Gardiner' there), saying the company is part of the community and will 'promise to be open with all plans', and Commissioner Keven Jensen saying Valar 'has been transparent'. Set beside the record: at that hearing Valar described its plans for the Emery parcel (fuel fabrication, manufacturing, possible temporary employee housing), and Commissioner Dennis Worwood said the sale was 'an intermediate step' while Valar looks for 'a larger piece of property with water' (gov-022), but no Carbon County site was named; the state's lease map for the Wellington section is dated two days later, 9 April 2026 (mine-048); the state's 20 April public notice named neither Valar nor nuclear (csite-032); and the first public agenda naming Valar with the Carbon site came on 10 August 2026 (csite-018). On the other side of the ledger, Valar did open its Emery facility to the public: on 17 February 2026 it told the commission it would hold open houses, the first on 24 February 2026. The gap is between a general promise of openness and a public record that did not show the Carbon site for four months; what Valar knew about the Wellington lease on 7 April is not in the records read.

In plain termsAt a public hearing in April 2026, Valar told Emery County residents it would be open about all its plans, and a county commissioner called the company transparent. Two days later the state produced the lease map for Valar's Carbon County site, and no public notice found named Valar as the applicant for that site until August. Valar did hold open houses in Emery County, and a commissioner said at the hearing that Valar wanted more land with water. But the public record did not connect Valar to the Wellington site for four months after the promise.
verified 2026-10-02: New in an earlier check, late September 2026; both minutes read in that check; dates of the Carbon records rest on mine-048, csite-032 and csite-018. No intent asserted.
recordconfirmed BLM records show three pending Valar land applications in its Price office, incl. a 10,270-acre 'Green River Gigasite'
2026-02-13 · mine-006 · Valar Atomics, Bureau of Land Management, BLM Price Field Office

BLM's public rights-of-way layer lists Valar Atomics on three pending cases; the first two name it 'Applicant' and were filed with the Price Field Office (the office that handles most rights-of-way cases in Carbon and Emery counties in the same layer): (1) UTUT106784007, 'Green River Gigasite Small Modular Reactor/Data Center', a FLPMA land-use case, 'Pending' since 13 February 2026 (last modified 26 May 2026), 10,270.61 acres in T20S-T21S, R14E-R16E, north-west of the town of Green River in Emery County; (2) UTUT106801248, 'Project Beehive Small Modular Reactor/Data Center', 'Pending' (disposition date 13 April 2026, record created 30 April, last modified 15 September 2026), with no land description or map in the public layer; (3) UTUT106833224, filed under BLM's 'Oil and Gas Pipelines' product with the commodity 'DISTRIBUTION LINE', created 23 July 2026, 'Pending', also with no land shown and no case name. None of the three involves mining claims. No Federal Register notice naming Valar for any of them was found. On 18 September 2026 Valar told The Washington Sun that the Green River filing was an application for survey access and that it had decided not to pursue that project; BLM's layer still listed the case as 'Pending' in late September 2026 (mine-008).

In plain termsBesides the reactor at the state lab, Valar has asked the federal government for the use of public land for at least one very large reactor-and-data-center site near Green River (about 16 square miles; in September 2026 Valar said it had decided not to pursue it, mine-008), for a second site called 'Project Beehive' whose location is not shown in BLM's public layer, and for a third case BLM files as a pipeline ('distribution line'), location not shown. These are applications, not approvals. They can be seen in BLM's public case map, but no public notice of them was found.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-checked in late September 2026: all three cases, dates, acreage, legal description and 'Pending' status match. BLM's Price Field Office web page does not list its counties, so the coverage wording now rests on the case layer itself; the third case is described by BLM's own category (pipeline), not guessed as power or gas.
recordconfirmed The county permit Valar will need: state law says approve it if harms can be reasonably reduced; state law requires no hearing
2025-11-06 · csite-015 · Carbon County, Office of the Property Rights Ombudsman

The Trust Lands memo says the parcel is zoned Mining and Grazing (M&G), where large industrial projects are a conditional use, and that the county conditional use permit (CUP) process is public, 'requiring the publishing of notice, a public hearing' and acceptance of public comments. Utah Code 17-79-506 (effective 6 November 2025) says a county land use authority 'shall approve a conditional use' if reasonable conditions can mitigate its reasonably anticipated detrimental effects (mitigation need not eliminate them), and may deny it only if they cannot be substantially mitigated. Utah's Office of the Property Rights Ombudsman states that state law does not require a public hearing on a CUP and that local ordinances decide. The conditional-use chapter of Carbon County's Development Code, as published on August 28, 2023, does not require a public hearing before a conditional use permit is approved; the memo's statement may reflect later changes or county practice, so ask the county which applies (see who decides, on the County Transparency page, which cites the code).

In plain termsA conditional use permit is the county's main say over what gets built on this land. But under Utah law it is not a yes-or-no vote on whether a project is wanted: if reasonable conditions can reduce the harms, the county must approve it with those conditions. State law does not require a public hearing; the county's own rules decide. The state's memo says Carbon's process includes notice, a hearing and public comment; the conditional-use chapter of the county code's 2023 edition does not require one (see who decides, on the County Transparency page). The county's planned code update (csite-013) is where residents can shape those conditions.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Re-read in late September 2026: memo p. 21 (Zoning and Local Land Use); Utah Code 17-79-506 (effective 11/6/2025); OPRO conditional-uses page (modified 2026-04-10). Quotes exact.
recordconfirmed 2025: the local paper printed Valar's 'gigasites' aim and a plan for a Carbon County factory hub; no site named
2025-10-10 · loc-034 · Valar Atomics, ETV News, Utah San Rafael Energy Lab, Utah Office of Energy Development, Jaron Wallace

Two ETV News items from 2025, eleven months or more before the Wellington lease vote, show that a Valar project in Carbon County was in the local paper in general terms. On 17 September 2025 ETV printed the state Office of Energy Development's groundbreaking release; its 'About Valar Atomics' paragraph says Valar 'is building America’s first nuclear gigasites', which it defines as clusters of thousands of high-temperature reactors. On 10 October 2025 an ETV article on the San Rafael lab, quoting lab director Jaron Wallace, reported that after about three years, once Valar completes its reactor and proves it can be run safely, 'their current plan is to build a manufacturing hub in Carbon County', which could bring hundreds of jobs to Carbon and Emery; it also said Valar was looking at powering data centers. The article does not say who told ETV about the Carbon plan, names no site, and says nothing about trust land or reactors in Carbon County. In sum, a Carbon County project by Valar was public in general terms from October 2025; no local record read from before the state vote tied Valar to the Wellington location, the trust-land lease or the plan for a reactor, fuel and industrial campus there; ETV's July 2026 trust-land notice for the section named no applicant or use (loc-032), while the state's own board packet and public meeting of 20 August 2026 named Valar and the site (mine-010). The lease was approved about eleven months after the article, sooner than the 'after three years' it described.

In plain termsIn the fall of 2025 the local paper printed that Valar aimed to build clusters of thousands of reactors, and that its plan was a manufacturing hub in Carbon County in about three years. What the paper's news reports did not say, until the day after the state approved it, was where: the square mile of state land north of Wellington (a July legal notice in the paper for that land named no applicant). So the general idea was public early; the specific place, and how soon it would come, were not.
verified 2026-10-02: New in an earlier check: both ETV pages read in full in late September 2026. Tests what was public before the vote: the general Carbon plan was public in 2025; the site was not. Revised before publication (2026-09-30): reworded the detail; reworded the plain-language text; corrected the description of ETV News (its source type and title).
recordconfirmed June 2025 Emery hearing: lab director said Valar was 'looking at manufacturing in Emery or Carbon County'
2025-06-17 · gov-020 · Emery County Commission, Utah San Rafael Energy Lab, Jaron Wallace, Valar Atomics, NuCube

The earliest county meeting on Valar found in Emery County's posted minutes followed news reports: at the 3 June 2025 Emery County Commission meeting a commissioner referred to 'the article floating around and on social media' about reactors at the San Rafael Energy Research Center and said a public hearing had been set for 17 June (its notice was posted 29 May). The minutes of that 17 June 2025 hearing on 'Nuclear Industries in Emery County' record the state lab director, Jaron Wallace, saying Valar 'would like to build nuclear reactors at the Research Center' and was 'looking at manufacturing in Emery or Carbon County', that another company, NuCube, was also interested, and that permitting 'will take some time'; later he said 'Transparency is imperative. We are not trying to keep anything from anyone', that the meeting was 'the first of many', and that safety was 'the number one priority'. Residents spoke both ways: several supported nuclear power and jobs; others asked whether the county has any control over a state-owned site, worried about being 'by-passed by the State', security, waste staying in the county, and cancer in families exposed in the past; one said she had not heard enough to be convinced. Set beside the record: the OED-Valar MOU signed a month earlier said the agreement and related information were confidential and barred publicity without both parties' consent (gov-011), terms that yield to Utah's records law and that the energy office also uses with other nuclear developers; DOE's pathway gave the county no approval role over the reactor (safe-001). This is also the earliest public record found that ties Valar to Carbon County, fourteen months before the Trust Lands agenda of August 2026 (csite-018, ppl-027); it names the county, not a site.

In plain termsEmery County's commissioners held a public hearing on nuclear in June 2025 after residents saw news stories. There, the state's lab director said Valar wanted to build reactors at the lab and was looking at manufacturing in Emery or Carbon County. So Carbon County was mentioned in public over a year before Valar's name appeared on a Trust Lands agenda for the Wellington lease (August 2026), but only in passing, at an Emery County meeting, with no site named. Residents asked who actually controls a state-owned nuclear site; on the record, the reactor's authorization rests with the federal Energy Department, a state board approves projects at the state lab (gov-013), and the county commission later approved Valar's building permit (gov-021).
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read the 17 June 2025 hearing minutes, the 3 June minutes and the notice in late September 2026; all quotes exact; residents described, not named. Fixed: the hearing had already been noticed (29 May) when the 3 June meeting mentioned it; plain wording made neutral.
analysisconfirmed Valar says it met Carbon County and state offices in 2024, initially about making fuels from coal-plant exhaust; a public agenda first named Valar for the Wellington site in Aug 2026
2024 · ppl-027 · Max Ukropina, Jared Haddock, Carbon County Commission, Utah Office of Energy Development, Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity, Southeastern Regional Development Agency, Utah Trust Lands Administration, Valar Atomics

Testing whether the public knew, against what the people involved have said on the record. Officials and Valar: Valar's Max Ukropina told the Trust Lands board that in 2024 he met the Office of Energy Development, the Governor's economic office, SERDA and Carbon County (mine-018); Commissioner Jared Haddock said the county worked with Valar 'since the beginning, when they were looking at other states' (ppl-020); the county's 29 June 2026 letter says the county had worked with Valar for over a year (mine-013); Carbon's October 2024 minutes note that Commissioner Martines phoned in while traveling home from a trip to Idaho National Laboratory connected with the San Rafael lab; no mention of Valar was found in those minutes (csite-026). The New Republic reports that before the May 2025 executive orders Valar staff were exploring land in southern Utah for a first 'gigasite', and the lab director says a contract followed about two weeks after Valar said it wanted to build at the lab; in July 2025 the state called its agreement a non-binding MOU. Public: the state's lease map is dated 9 April 2026 (mine-048); the 20 April 2026 state notice called it an unnamed industrial and power project (csite-032); the first public agenda naming Valar for the site is 10 August 2026 (csite-018); the first ETV News report of the lease that was found came on 18 September, the day after approval. Finding: by the officials' and Valar's own accounts, county, state-agency and regional officials were in contact with Valar about Carbon County from 2024, roughly two years before a public agenda named Valar for the site. The 2024 contacts, as Ukropina described them, concerned making fuels from coal-plant flue gas; when the Wellington parcel itself entered the talks is not settled by the records read (Ukropina's line in the auto-transcript, 'the first property I looked at was actually property', is garbled, mine-018; the state's lease map is dated 9 April 2026; the county's 29 June 2026 letter says it had worked with Valar for over a year). This is a gap in time before public notice, not proof of any intent, and the board's notices met the meeting law's timing (csite-016); no record of what was said in those 2024-2026 contacts was found in public records.

In plain termsBy Valar's account, Carbon County, two state offices and the regional development agency SERDA had been talking with Valar since 2024, at first about making fuels from coal-plant exhaust; a county commissioner said the county had worked with Valar 'since the beginning'. The Wellington parcel shows up in state records from April 2026 (a lease map), but the first public record found attaching Valar's name to it was an August 2026 meeting notice, about five weeks before the vote. The emails and meeting notes from those two years would show what was discussed, and they can be requested.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read the 20 Aug auto-transcript (Ukropina; Haddock), TNR (delivered part) and UIJP; quotes exact. Fixed: the finding said officials 'knew of Valar's interest in Carbon County' for two years; the record shows contact from 2024, first about coal flue-gas fuels, while the Wellington parcel appears in public-agency records only from April 2026 (map) and by name in August 2026. Plain's 'The people in charge knew' removed. Cross-refs mine-013, mine-018, mine-048, csite-018, csite-026, csite-032 checked. Quote marks removed from wording taken from the county letter and minutes (mine-013, csite-026), which were not re-opened in this check; the substance rests on those facts. Corrected in late September 2026: the closing sentence on intent shortened to 'not proof of any intent'. Corrected 2026-09-30: the October 2024 county minutes record only that Commissioner Martines phoned in while traveling home from Idaho National Laboratory.
recordconfirmed Utah law: a claim post must carry a notice naming the claim and locators, recorded with the county in 30 days
2024-05-01 · mine-026 · Utah State Legislature, Carbon County Recorder

Utah Code 40-1-2 requires the locator to erect a monument at the place of discovery and post on it a notice of location giving the claim's name, the names of the locators, the date of location, and its size and description tied to a natural object or permanent monument. Utah Code 40-1-3 requires the claim's boundaries to be distinctly marked on the ground so they can be readily traced. Utah Code 40-1-4 requires a substantial copy of the notice to be recorded with the county recorder of the county where the claim lies within 30 days of posting.

In plain termsIn Utah, a mining claim's discovery monument must carry a notice on the post: the claim's name, who staked it and when. A copy must be on file at the Carbon County Recorder within 30 days. A Notice of Location names Valar Atomics Inc and its lode claim RW 453 (mine-453).
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026 on le.utah.gov: 40-1-2 (effective 1 May 2024), 40-1-3 and 40-1-4 match; all three quotes exact. Updated in late September 2026 for the RW 453 notice (mine-453).
recordconfirmed Carbon County backed nuclear power in a public 2023 vote; no county agenda or minutes found name Valar's Wellington site
2023-12-20 · csite-026 · Carbon County Commission, Larry Jensen, Tony Martines, PacifiCorp

On 20 December 2023 the Carbon County Commission, on a posted agenda item, adopted Resolution 2023-06 'Supporting the energy industry, more specifically nuclear power'. Per the minutes, Commissioner Jensen said it was meant to tell PacifiCorp/Rocky Mountain Power the community favored nuclear plants and that 'we need to begin to educate the public about nuclear power'; it mirrored an Emery County resolution. The commission's minutes for January 2024 to April 2026 (50 sets; the examples below were read again for this check) mention nuclear only in brief remarks: a 3 January 2024 recap of that resolution; Commissioner Martines phoning in on 16 October 2024 while returning from Idaho National Laboratory 'in conjunction with' the San Rafael Energy Research Center; and, on 18 February 2026, Commissioners Martines' and Jensen's report on the Ward 250 reactor's delivery to the Orangeville test site, which Martines called the first of three prototypes. The one Trust Lands item, on 5 November 2025, renewed a county road easement on trust land along Ridge Road and Miller Creek, not the Wellington parcel. The commission's posted agendas from 6 December 2023 to 16 September 2026 (73 notices) name Valar once: a 'Valor Atomics presentation' on 19 August 2026. Its minutes record an update on the Emery lab, plans for a town hall in Price and a reactor open house within 30 to 45 days, and commissioners highlighting 'the tax benefits the plant will bring'; they do not name the Wellington site or the lease the state board heard the next day (mine-013). The 2026 minutes also record commissioners celebrating Valar's criticality (1 July) and Valar announcing a Carbon County town hall for late September or early October (2 September); none names the parcel or the letter. No commission agenda or minutes read for December 2023 to September 2026 name the Wellington parcel or the 29 June 2026 support letter, and none read shows a Valar zoning change, development agreement, road-use agreement, tax abatement or other county approval for the site.

In plain termsCarbon County's leaders told the public openly, in 2023, that they wanted nuclear power in the area, and voted on it in a public meeting. Valar gave a presentation at a county meeting in August 2026. In almost three years of county meeting records, none found shows the specific plan: the square mile north of Wellington, or the letter the commissioners signed backing it. The county may not have been legally required to vote on the letter (csite-016), but residents reading the commission's posted agendas and minutes would not have found the site there.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds, with the headline narrowed (the 19 Aug 2026 agenda does name Valar, though not the site). Re-checked in late September 2026: December 20, 2023, October 16, 2024 and November 5, 2025 minutes (quotes exact); all 47 commission notices on body 1148 from 4 Dec 2024 to 16 Sept 2026 searched by their agenda text (only 19 Aug 2026 names Valar/Valor). The full 50-set minutes check for January 2024 to April 2026 was not repeated in this check. Date set to the 2023 vote. Second check, late September 2026: all 73 commission notices on body 1148 from 6 Dec 2023 to 16 Sept 2026 searched by their agenda text (only 19 Aug 2026 names Valar/Valor); minutes re-read for 3 Jan 2024 and all 16 sets from 7 Jan to 2 Sept 2026 (Valar or nuclear appears on 18 Feb, 1 July, 19 Aug and 2 Sept; none names the parcel, Section 16 or the support letter). The 2024-2025 minutes rest on the first reading of all 50 sets, apart from the four sets re-read. Quotes are exact to the text read from the scans. Revised before publication (late September 2026): absence stated as 'no record found'. Revised before publication (2026-09-30): the minutes name Martines (Oct 2024 call-in) and Martines and Jensen (Feb 2026 report).
recordconfirmed Surface Resources Act: an unpatented mining claim may be used only for prospecting, mining, processing and uses reasonably incident to them
1955-07-23 · mine-022 · U.S. Congress

30 U.S.C. 612(a) (Surface Resources Act of 23 July 1955) says a mining claim located after that date may not be used, before a patent is issued, for any purpose other than prospecting, mining or processing and uses reasonably incident to them. Subsection (b) keeps the United States' right to manage the surface and let others use it, so long as that does not materially interfere with mining.

In plain termsA mining claim is a right to dig for minerals, not a right to use the land for anything else. Building a reactor, a data center or a factory on an unpatented claim would be outside what the law allows.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read in late September 2026: 30 U.S.C. 612(a)-(b) and the 23 July 1955 source credit match; quote exact.
recordconfirmed The meeting-law yardstick: 24-hour notice, agendas that say what is decided, minutes within 30 days, audio in 3 business days
undated · csite-016 · Utah Legislature, Utah Trust Lands Administration, Carbon County Commission

Utah's Open and Public Meetings Act requires a public body to give at least 24 hours' notice with the agenda, date, time and place (52-4-202(1)); the agenda must give 'reasonable specificity' about the topics, and a body may not take final action on a topic not listed on the agenda (52-4-202(6)). A 'meeting' is a gathering of the body with a quorum, convened to take comment, deliberate or act (52-4-103(5)). A state body must make pending minutes public within 30 days, post approved minutes within three business days of approval, and post the audio within three business days (52-4-203(4)(e)); a county commission must make pending minutes public within 30 days and audio available within three business days (52-4-203(4)(f)). Applied to the records: the Trust Lands board's notices were posted on 10 August for the 20 August meeting and on 8 September for the 17 September meeting; the 17 September audio recording was attached on 18 September and the transcript on 23 September, and pending minutes are not due until mid-October, so no lateness shows as of 29 September. The Carbon Commission's 29 June support letter was not found on any of its agendas posted for its 6 May to 16 September 2026 meetings (mine-013); the records do not show whether the commissioners agreed on it in any 'meeting' as the Act defines it, so whether the Act applied is a legal question.

In plain termsUtah's open-meetings law says public boards must announce meetings a day ahead, say on the agenda what they will decide, and not decide anything that was not on it. Measured against it, the state board's notices for the Wellington lease were on time. The county's letter of support is the open question: it was signed, but no public meeting record found shows the county deciding to send it.
verified 2026-10-02: Holds. Re-read in late September 2026: 52-4-202 (eff. 5/3/2023), 52-4-203 (eff. 5/1/2024), 52-4-103 (eff. 5/6/2026) on le.utah.gov; notice pages 1100659 (posted 10 Aug) and 1107027 (posted 8 Sept; audio added 18 Sept, transcript 23 Sept). Date set to null: the fact states a legal yardstick drawn from several sections, not one event.
recordconfirmed Federal and Utah law: no lode claim may be located until a vein or lode is discovered within it
undated · dir-004 · State of Utah, Carbon County Recorder, Valar Atomics

Federal mining law, 30 U.S.C. 23, limits a lode claim to 1,500 feet along the vein and 300 feet each side of it, and says no claim may be located 'until the discovery of the vein or lode within the limits of the claim located'. Utah Code 40-1-1 says the same for Utah. 40-1-2 requires a monument at the place of discovery with the notice on it (claim name, locators, date, feet claimed along the vein each way, width, the general course of the vein, and a tie to a natural object or permanent monument). 40-1-3 requires the boundaries to be distinctly marked on the ground. 40-1-4 requires a substantial copy of the notice to be recorded with the county recorder within 30 days after posting: for RW 453, located September 12, 2026, by about October 12, 2026 (mine-453). 40-1-11 makes it a class B misdemeanor to tear down or deface a posted notice or remove a claim's stakes or monuments. The RW 453 notice therefore amounts to a claim that a vein or lode was discovered in Section 28; no record read says what mineral.

In plain termsIn Utah you may not stake a lode claim until you have found a mineral vein inside it; the notice post is supposed to stand at the discovery. So Valar's claim implies it found a vein in Section 28. What vein, of what mineral, was not found in the public records read so far. The county copy of the notice is due at the Carbon County Recorder by about October 12.
verified 2026-10-02: Read from the Legislature's current chapter PDF (generated 2025-05-07). 30 U.S.C. 23 read in late September 2026 (LII): discovery-before-location sentence quoted exactly; size 1,500 ft x 300 ft each side.