A longer version of this article will be published by The Center for the National Interest and it can be found here.
The hope for American nuclear renaissance now has a spectacular highlight reel. It is a cinematic marriage of national security and nuclear flexing that features three C-17’s airlifting a Valar Atomics’ Ward 250 advanced nuclear reactor from California to Utah.
But despite the undeniably priceless political and public relations value of this imagery, it is debatable how much this event propelled progress toward the Trump administration’s nuclear deployment goals.
Public Relations vs. Reality
The Ward 250 flight occurred because Valar is building a reactor test site at the San Rafael Energy Lab in Orangeville, Utah. The Wall Street Journal reported that Valar paid the cost of the flights, roughly estimated at less than $1 million. But the product will be a test reactor, and no power production will occur at this site.
Valar is a start-up launched in 2023, and its founder wants to make it the fissioning counterpart to Elon Musk’s Space-X. That, among other reasons, has helped make it a darling of the Trump administration. It has attracted significant venture capital investment and that has provided it with a certain tech cache that perhaps other more prosaic reactor vendors don’t possess.
Valar is a participant in the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Reactor Pilot Project and its Advanced Nuclear Fuel Line Pilot Project. But it is not part of any military nuclear power project, which makes it an unusual test case for military microreactor transportation.
The Department of Defense’s Project Pele aims to develop and demonstrate the ability to effectively transport a TRISO-fueled military microreactor inside a standard 20-foot shipping container. But the Pele reactor chosen by the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office is being built by BWXT, not Valar.
Questions and Claims
Despite the excitement, the Valar flight does not represent “the dawn of a new era in American nuclear engineering , one defined by speed [and] scale.” What was transported was a single, non-operational, and unfueled unit, delivered in three pieces.
It also was not the first time a small reactor had been transported by the US military. There are several examples from the 1950’s and 1960’s. And in 1992, two Russian TOPAZ-II space nuclear reactors, fueled with 93% enriched uranium, were flown by U.S. C-5’s to New Mexico.
Questions also have been raised about other claims of success. For example, Valar announced that its Project NOVA core achieved zero-power criticality in November 2025 at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Former Assistant Secretary of Nuclear Energy at DoE, Katy Huff, explained, that the test at LANL “was a cold zero power test that did not take the fuel up to actual power densities…I want to see ‘hot full power’ criticality” which allows an understanding of whether “modelling matches reality”.
The Valar reactor seems to have some advantages as the U.S. government has approved its Preliminary Documented Safety Analyses (PDSA’s). But there are numerous other competitors in the small reactor horserace, and several are outpacing Valar even if their accomplishments are less fizzy.
NuScale’s SMR has received design certification. The TerraPower Natrium reactor has received a construction permit for its Kemmerer, Wyoming location. The BWRX-300 SMR has received a construction license from the Canadian regulatory authority. And Radiant Energy is planning a full power test of its reactor this Summer.
Deficient Delivery
Trump is committed to vaulting America back to the top position in the global nuclear power competition. That is a critical objective for domestic energy production and national security purposes. But the administration does not have a sound strategy for delivering this goal. Its run and gun approach to nuclear development is not typical for building sustained nuclear energy capability.
This act-fast-and-break-things approach certainly creates flash and it may generate opportunities. But it hasn’t yet delivered any new commercial power reactors under contract or construction in the U.S. By contrast, China is building nuclear reactors like Lego’s and Russia has signed agreements for SMR exports.
Valar’s high-flying video delivered on two of the Trump administration’s prized priorities. It created undeniably compelling public relations cinema and it projected American nuclear energy dynamism. What it didn’t do is prove that America can achieve the nuclear energy dominance it so desperately desires and that the country needs. That goal is a decade or more away and it requires devoting much more attention to overcoming technical, financial, and policy hurdles than heralding Hollywood highlight reels.
Ken Luongo, President, Partnership for Global Security
