Ward 250 groundbreaking: Valar's page says 17 Sep 2025; state records put the ceremony on 11 Sep 2025

company claimconfirmed

2025-09-11 · orig-007 · Valar Atomics, Ward 250, Utah San Rafael Energy Lab

Valar's Ward 250 page lists 'Ward 250 Groundbreaking' on 09.17.2025, and its Castle Country page lists a local news item from September 2025 about breaking ground at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab. DOE's June 18, 2026 release quotes Taylor saying the site was empty nine months before criticality, consistent with a September 2025 start. State records settle the ceremony date: the Office of Energy Development's slide update to the Legislature's interim committee (15 October 2025) says Valar 'held groundbreaking' on September 11, 2025, Emery County's 2 September 2025 minutes say ground would be broken 'on September 11', and the county economic board's minutes schedule it for that Thursday (gov-021). 17 September 2025 is the day the joint state-Valar release was published, which is the date Valar's page shows.

In plain termsConstruction at the Emery County lab began in September 2025, about nine months before the reactor first went critical in June 2026. State records put the groundbreaking ceremony on 11 September 2025; Valar's page shows 17 September, the day the announcement was published.

Ward 250 | Valar Atomics (Valar Atomics) primary company “Ward 250 Groundbreaking 09.17.2025”
Department of Energy Celebrates Second Advanced Reactor Achieving Criticality (U.S. Department of Energy, 2026-06-18) primary government
Office of Energy Development Update, Public Utilities, Energy, and Technology Interim Committee, October 15, 2025 (items 2-8) (Utah Office of Energy Development (Utah Legislature meeting materials), 2025-10-15) primary government “held groundbreaking for a nuclear test reactor on September 11, 2025”
Emery County Commission Meeting Minutes, September 2, 2025 (Emery County Commission (Utah Public Notice Website), 2025-09-02) primary government “break ground on their facility at the San Rafael Energy Research Center on September 11”

verified 2026-10-02: Second check, late September 2026: Ward 250 page date and DOE's quote of Taylor ('Nine months ago...') re-read; consistent. Further check, late September 2026: the event date had been taken from the company's page (17 Sept); state and county records read in late September 2026 (among them gov-021) put the ceremony on 11 Sept 2025, so the date field and headline now carry the recorded event date, with Valar's date kept as its claim.

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