A Nuclear Reactor Gets Flown from California to Utah

There was a significant milepost Sunday in the US push for small-scale nuclear reactors, known as SMRs. A reactor built by Valar Atomics in California was packed into three C-17s and flown to a site in Utah where it will be set up and run as a training reactor.

California startup Valar Atomics on Sunday transported a small nuclear test reactor aboard three Air Force C-17 jets from March Air Reserve near Los Angeles to Hill Air Force Base near Layton. From there, the reactor was placed on trucks for transport to the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab in Emery County. Officials said they expect the reactor to be switched on by July 4.

“The history books will actually write about this day,” said Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, shortly after the reactor landed. “It’s projects like this that will ensure we will never be dependent on an adversary or foreign entity for power.”

The reactor won’t produce power for Utah residents. Instead, it will undergo more testing and be used to train a future nuclear workforce at the San Rafael lab. But the U.S. Department of Defense said in a news release the flight demonstrates the country can produce nuclear infrastructure that’s easy to transport and deploy, using a “commercial-first” strategy.

You’ve probably heard already that there is a lot of concern about the electrical grid which is facing strains as big companies continue to build massive new data centers among other things. CNN published an article about this last month.

Tech giants are in a heated race to build data centers and dominate the AI landscape. But America might not be ready for the energy demand.

The country’s aging electrical grid could struggle to keep up with the surge in energy needs. And US households are largely footing the bill for additional costs…

Residential electricity rates were up 5.2% in October from the same time in 2024, according to the monthly electricity report released by the Energy Information Administration. Electricity costs for areas near data centers increased by as much as 267% compared to five years ago, a Bloomberg News analysis found last year.

The increase is due in part to the data center boom, which is boosting demand and straining resources, noted Ryan Hledik, a principal at the research and consulting firm Brattle Group.

SMRs are intended to help reduce this strain by allowing large datacenters to become energy self-sufficient. 

Isaiah Taylor, the CEO of Valar Atomics, joined Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Undersecretary of Defense Michael Duffey for the first C17 airlift of a next- generation nuclear reactor. The reactor was flown from March Air Reserve Base in California.

“Coal built the industrial age, oil won the wars of the 20th century, and nuclear energy deployed at speed and with American ingenuity will power the century ahead,” Taylor said in his opening speech.

Taylor said that the specific reactor brought to Utah is built for five megawatts electric, which he said is enough to power 5,000 homes and most military bases. Eventually, he added that it will be used to power commercial operations like data centers and advanced manufacturing.

So the transport of this reactor is just a first step but it shows that it would be possible to manufacture these small reactors in a factory and then ship them around the country to wherever they need to go. Valar hopes this training reactor is just the first of many.

Valar has raised more than $150 million in funding, CNBC reported, and the company plans to build hundreds of reactors to power data centers and new manufacturing in the nation.

The test reactor will be the first advanced reactor deployed in Utah, Emy Lesofski, director of the Office of Energy Development, confirmed. The state and Valar announced their partnership to support construction of a test reactor in May.

Here’s some images of this thing being loaded into one of the C-17s, plus a reaction from Valar Atomics. 

Valar Atomics is proud to support America’s warfighters. pic.twitter.com/wr10bLw57F

— Valar Atomics (@valaratomics) February 15, 2026

Finally, the US isn’t the only place where SMRs are starting to make some headway. A well known company in the UK just got the nod to lead production there.

British aviation company Rolls-Royce has big plans for nuclear power, as well as other major energy projects, having been selected as the United Kingdom’s preferred bidder to build the country’s first small modular reactors (SMRs) last year. The company is expected to fast-track the development of the U.K.’s first SMRs, as well as explore other innovative fields, such as producing power from space.

In June, the U.K. government announced that Rolls-Royce SMR had been selected as the preferred bidder to partner with Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE-N) to develop SMRs, pledging almost $3.3 billion of public investment for the SMR programme. In November, the government announced plans to develop a first-of-its-kind nuclear power station on the Welsh island of Anglesey, with works scheduled to start in 2026 and first power generation expected by the mid-2030s.

In 5-10 years there could be a few of these operating around the country and from there it’s just a matter of how cheaply they can be made in order to make nuclear power competitive with other sources.

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