Are these companies really Utah’s nuclear miracle workers?

The enthusiasm of Utah’s political brain trust for a “nuclear awakening” is only matched by their gullibility. Gov. Spencer Cox plans to put the safety of Utah’s 3.5 million people in the hands of three companies: Holtec International, Valar Atomics, and High Tech Solutions. Utahns should demand competency, integrity, and expertise in nuclear engineering and radiation hazards from these companies. Judge for yourself if that’s what they bring to the table.

The president of High Tech Solutions, Chris Hayter, claims nuclear power is safe because he’s worked in “nearly every area of a reactor” and he’s “in good health today” so, there’s nothing to worry about.  Before co-founding Hi-Tech Solutions in 2009, he was a “reactor services technician.” Before that he was an “account manager for Gold’s Gym.”   He lists his education as “Tacoma Community College” and “University of Washington Tacoma, Business Administration and Management, General.”  Not exactly a resume dripping with expertise in nuclear physics, engineering, or radiation health hazards. 

The one thing the Trump administration has never been accused of is competency. Likewise, Gov. Cox has never been accused of being overly devoted to public health protection and scientific rigor. So when President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy, and then Cox, anointed Valar Atomics to launch a new iteration of nuclear power (the most scientifically sophisticated but dangerous source of energy) right here in Utah, a reasonable person might be skeptical of the decision. A local news outlet published a glowing introduction to the founder of Valar Atomics, Isaiah Taylor, as “remaking America’s energy industry.”  Consider for yourself whether Taylor will be Utah’s nuclear miracle worker.

Taylor, a 27 year-old high school dropout, founded Valar Atomics pursuing what no one in the world has yet accomplished — making nuclear power profitable or safe. His prior business experience, running an auto repair shop, is not exactly nuclear fission adjacent. Taylor’s hubris and lack of basic radiation education or expertise were startlingly revealed by an April 2025 post on his company’s website where he stated Valar’s spent fuel was so safe that holding it in one’s bare hands for five minutes would emit a radiation dose equivalent to only one CT scan. In reality, you would be dead within seconds. 

Taylor, like Pete Hegseth, is an eager disciple of Doug Wilson, the Christian nationalist pastor of Moscow’s Christ Church in Idaho which Taylor apparently regularly attends. Wilson advocates for a patriarchal society, women must be submissive to men, and women should never have been given the right to vote. Taylor’s venture capital funding has been boosted by Masha Drokova, a Russian-American (married name Masha Bucher) who is mentioned over 1,600 times in the Trump-Epstein files, was Epstein’s publicist for two years, and was also a teen leader of a Putin youth organization, Nashi.

Holtec CEO Kris Singh at least has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. However, Holtec, whose primary business is decommissioning retired nuclear plants, has been embroiled in scandals for 15 years, beginning with a scandal alleging bribery, overbilling the Tennessee Valley Authority, and a temporary ban from federal work, the first such ban ever by the TVA. Holtec is a defendant in a whistleblower lawsuit filed by its former chief financial officer accusing the company of investor fraud. Holtec responded by suing the whistleblower. Holtec paid a $5 million fine and was censured by the state of New Jersey in a plea arrangement to avoid prosecution on a scheme to avoid state taxes. Another former CFO claimed “Holtec sought to conceal $150 million in annual projected losses for its proposed nuclear waste facility in New Mexico. The CFO also claims Holtec “grossly overstated” the amount of money it spends annually on research and development, lied about long-term company debt, and inflated the value of its manufacturing facilities. New York and Massachusetts have won legal settlements against Holtec to stop the company from depleting public utilities’ trust funds set aside for decommissioning.

Holtec tried to dump 1.1 million gallons of waste water, which was contaminated with a million times more radioactive tritium and 200 million times more Cesium-137 than background levels, into Cape Cod’s bay. When stopped by regulators, Holtec secretly evaporated much of the radioactive water, which is just as dangerous.  

The smartest, most well-educated people in the world have been unable to make nuclear power safe or profitable for 70 yrs. Nuclear power remains high risk even in the best of hands. Do these companies sound like “the best of hands”? Perhaps Utah voters should let Gov. Cox know what they think of placing the health and safety of Utahns at their mercy.