Has ETV News been objective about Valar Atomics and the data-center debate in Carbon and Emery counties? One story cannot answer that; a pattern can. This article checks ETV's coverage against recordings of the meetings it covered, the public record and other Utah newsrooms.
The town hall
On Sept. 30, ETV published its account of the town hall Valar held the night before at the SERDA building in Price [1]. Residents asked about safety, spent fuel, land and the environment, ETV wrote, and Valar answered. The article carries no byline and quotes no one. That is new. Every ETV story page saved for this review through Sept. 23 names its author under the headline, as in "By Stephanie Olsen on September 18, 2026" on ETV's story about the state land vote [3]. The town-hall story, and ETV's Oct. 7 story on the two energy projects, show only a date [1, 4]. New Deseret Press has a recording of the evening from partway through Valar's opening remarks until about two minutes after an attendee, Jake Hardy, was removed [26].
Max Ukropina, Valar's head of projects, told the room [26, 0:25:08]:
This is a phased step-by-step approach. We're looking to grow around this site over time. Federal land, private land, our federal application is already sitting in the BLM's public records for a much larger site. Anyone can look it up.
Anyone can. The public case records of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) list pending Valar applications for a 10,271-acre "Green River Gigasite," a site Valar says it will not pursue, according to The Washington Sun, and a case titled "Project Beehive" [29, 9, 42]. NPR reported that Beehive would cover more than 9,000 acres of federal land near Price [8] (see the map). "The reality is that we will grow as much as we can," Ukropina said [26, 0:29:37].
KOAL's story, published Oct. 1, carried what ETV's did not: chief executive Isaiah Taylor's pledge that if what Valar heard from everybody in Carbon County was that they did not want it, Valar would not build there; his answer on why Valar had joined a lawsuit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); and a critic, congressional candidate Kent Udell, in a statement from outside the meeting [2].
No video of the evening has surfaced. Valar's YouTube channel carries its open houses, its scram test and its demonstration with Nvidia, and three Castle Country videos it posted on Oct. 7 and 8, but nothing from the town hall [24, 25].
The removal
KOAL reported that Hardy asked Valar to correct its statement that holding one of its spent fuel rods gives the radiation of a CAT scan; Taylor said the statement referred to a test reactor, not a commercial one [2]. On the recording he says that reactor, Ward One, was renamed Ward 250 when the executive order came out, "because it's the 250 birthday of the United States" [26, 0:59:03]. Valar's sentence came with no calculation [23]. Worked from Valar's own figures, holding all of Ward One's spent fuel for five minutes, a day after shutdown, delivers between 8 and 33 times the upper end of the typical dose from one CT scan; it matches one CT only for a small piece of the fuel, or after weeks to months of cooling, conditions the post never mentioned [43, 34]. The new name does not change the arithmetic: spent fuel's radioactivity depends on how much power a reactor made and for how long [43]. Valar's post described 100 kilowatts of heat for less than a month [23]. Valar says Ward 250 will run about as much, though its own safety analysis allows the fuel to produce up to ten times that energy [43]; Beehive's reactors would produce 25 megawatts of electricity each, NPR reported [8].
Later, during an exchange about grazing, KOAL reported, Hardy stood and shouted from the crowd and law enforcement escorted him out [2]. On the recording he tells the room, "You're all on their side," calls the audience a "bunch of plants," and says of Valar's mining claim, "It's a lie" [26, 1:29:07 to 1:29:21]. Hardy says he was seated until the officer stood him up and walked him out. Just before Hardy says "You're all on their side," a man can be heard saying, "Get out of here, get up and get out of here"; the recording does not show who [26, 1:29:04 to 1:29:07]. Seconds after Hardy was led out, a man in the room apologized "for that"; the rest of what he says is partly unclear, and the recording does not say who he is [26, 1:29:34 to 1:29:37].
The claim Hardy was shouting about is staked on the ground. A wooden post tagged "453" marks Valar Atomics' RW 453 lode mining claim, which its posted notice places in Section 28, Township 14 South, Range 11 East, northeast of Wellington [37, 44]. The post stands beside a paved road under an open-range cattle sign, within sight of homes.
A lode claim covers a vein of valuable mineral. Federal law says no location of a mining claim may be made "until the discovery of the vein or lode within the limits of the claim located" [35], and Utah law requires the posted notice to give the claim's length along the vein, its width on either side of it, and the vein's general course [36]. RW 453's notice, which gives Sept. 12 as the date of location, never uses the word "vein" and names no mineral. It measures the claim instead from a "Location Monument" and the "center line of the Claim": 1,490 feet east, 10 feet west, and 300 feet on each side [37].
ETV did not report the removal [1]. State Rep. Christine Watkins, R-District 67, who attended and who ran second in June's Republican primary for Carbon County Commission, by preliminary results [18], did. On Facebook the next day she wrote of "a young man who succumbed to shouting and some physical interactions," adding: "We all applauded when the deputies escorted him out and told him to go home" [38]. The recording bears out the shouting, but not the applause: there is none as he is led out, or in the two minutes after, though applause from the room is plain on it elsewhere that evening, as speakers finish [26, 1:29:04 to 1:31:41].
That makes three accounts of the same minute, KOAL's, Watkins's and Hardy's, and they do not agree. The room has ceiling-mounted cameras; two are visible on the back wall in the photo at the top of this article. New Deseret Press calls on SERDA, whose building hosted the town hall, to release any video it holds of the meeting, in full, from the first speaker to the last. SERDA's deputy director, Jade Powell, sits on the Carbon County Planning Commission as an alternate member [33, 39]; he was called in its roll on Oct. 6, the night it heard Valar and Altigen [27, about 0:01:20].
Hardy's comment:
I'd do it again, they are liars. I was removed from the meeting while sitting down. Daniel Campbell, the coal ranching country running commissioner guy stood up and approached me for confrontation. That was wild to me because I was telling people who were telling the rancher that got kicked off SITLA for Valar's project to shut up for telling him to shut up. Wild... ranching was literally his campaign.
Listen3:02
No one is named on the recording as Hardy is led out, and KOAL's report does not mention Campbell. New Deseret Press is investigating.
Campbell led June's Republican primary for Carbon County Commission over Commissioner Larry Jensen, with 53.28 percent of the preliminary vote [18]. His banner reads "Coal. Ranch. Country." In August he toured Valar's Orangeville facility and encouraged people to stop by Valar's booth at International Days [41]. A memo of the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) says the land it approved leasing to Valar carries a grazing permit that would be ended before construction [28].
The pattern
ETV's own site search for "Valar," with two stories that spell it "Valor" and the town-hall story, gives 50 ETV items on Valar from July 2025 through Sept. 30, 2026, and every one was read [10]. Two name a critic; eight more mention concerns without saying who raised them. Eight quote Valar's own people, 20 times in all. Six are labeled press releases. None mentions the lawsuit Valar joined against the NRC in April 2025. To be fair, ETV's June 2025 story on Emery County's nuclear hearing named two concerned residents [11].
ETV also leaves things out. At the SITLA board meeting on Sept. 17, Jensen said: "Even with the pushback, we realize that there are a few in our community who will push back, but the silent majority are the ones that we really represent, and we feel like they will be supportive of this as they're educated and learn how safe this process is" [28]. ETV's story on the vote quoted another line from the same remarks, about bringing in new industry, and not this one [3]; the Salt Lake Tribune and KOAL ran it [5, 2].
ETV's town-hall story also left out Jensen. The moderator invited "Commissioner Jensen" to speak, and he told the room [26, 0:51:51]:
I want to acknowledge that I think everybody here believes in God. And there have been lots of miracles. They're not here by chance. And they're here because you need them. We all need them.
He closed by urging the room, "We hope you can do some research on your own" [26, 0:53:09]. ETV's story did not report his remarks [1].
And as of Sept. 30, a search of ETV's site for "Altigen" or "Jurassic Spark," the company and its plan for a gas-fired power plant and data centers east of Wellington, returned nothing, though the project had been in county minutes since March, the County Commission had voted on its pipeline in May, and the Tribune had reported it on Sept. 24 [10, 30, 32, 5].
October 6
The Planning Commission room was packed on Oct. 6 and more people stood outside, KUTV reported; FOX 13 reported more than 100 people [6, 7]. The audience was told that "if there are outbursts from the public," people could be removed [27, about 0:11]. One person yelled "We don't want you here!" as Valar's team began, KUTV reported [6]. Answering a commissioner, Taylor said, "If the community doesn't want us here, we won't do it," and the room applauded [6, 27, about 1:19]. The commission tabled Altigen's permit to Nov. 10 [27, about 0:53].
ETV's Oct. 7 story covered the tabling and Valar's presentation. It did not report the shout, the warnings or the applause [4]. Its page carried a Valar Atomics "Apply now" ad.
Who owns ETV News?
ETV News is part of a telephone and fiber company. Its terms of use list ETV News among the companies they call, together, "Emery Telcom" [12]. Emery Telcom runs fiber across Carbon and Emery counties and has said it was building fiber from Salt Lake City to Colorado [15]. Its chief executive, Brock Johansen, chairs the Carbon/Emery Economic Development Committee, which has met in Emery Telcom's Orangeville offices and heard presentations on nuclear power [13, 14]. None of ETV's 50 Valar stories says who owns the paper.
Fiber is one of the reasons Altigen gives for coming. The minutes of the Carbon Community Economic Development (CED) Board for April 21 say Altigen chose the area east of Wellington "due to the attractive fiber ping rate between the location, Salt Lake, and Denver" [31]. No record we found names whose fiber that is, or shows any agreement between Emery Telcom and Altigen or Valar. None of this shows that Emery Telcom's business has shaped ETV's coverage. It is a reason readers should be told who owns the paper.
ETV's Valar coverage also runs through Kevin Butler. ETV News's own Contact Us page lists him under "Administration" as its "Manager" [22]. He is also an Orangeville city councilman who ran for Emery County Commission this year and, ETV has reported, works for Emery Telcom and heads the Emery County Business Chamber [16, 17]. ETV credits 13 of its 50 Valar items to him as their author of record, four under his byline [21, 10]. They include its stories on the Orangeville council's discussion of Valar's water-share purchase and on a council meeting that quotes "Councilman Kevin Butler" [19, 20]. His account also posted ETV's report of the June primary results, in which he ran second in the preliminary count [18]. None of the 13 tells readers he manages the paper or works for its owner.
Butler has been plain about where he stands. In a public Facebook post after the Oct. 6 meeting, he wrote of the "divisiveness" he saw in Carbon County (emphasis added) [40]:
Some of it comes from fear. But a lot of it comes from ignorance and, frankly, stupidity.
In the same post he quoted Taylor as saying, "if people don't want us to build here, then we won't" (the county's recording has the words given above), and described people in the back who "clapped and cheered." He wrote that "Carbon County is on life support," addressed "the idiots who clapped in the back of that room," and told them they had no plan as good as "the golden goose Valar is delivering to your doorstep." He also urged readers: "Be skeptical when you need to be. Hold companies accountable." The post does not mention ETV [40].
Is ETV News telling the whole story? Examine the facts and decide for yourself.
Sources
News reports
- ETV News, "Valar Atomics hosts town hall on proposed Carbon County site," Sept. 30, 2026. ↩ a b c d
- KOAL News (Aidan Mortensen), "Valar Atomics hosts community open house amid community concerns over proposed developments on state and federal lands," Oct. 1, 2026. ↩ a b c d
- ETV News (Stephanie Olsen), "Valar Atomics secures land agreement for Carbon County project," Sept. 18, 2026. ↩ a b
- ETV News, "Carbon County Considers Two Major Energy Projects," Oct. 7, 2026. ↩ a b
- The Salt Lake Tribune (Leia Larsen), "2 big data centers are coming to Utah's coal country. How they'll be powered has residents 'up in arms,'" Sept. 24, 2026. ↩ a b
- KUTV (David Ochoa), "Residents push back against plan to build nuclear reactors in Carbon County," Oct. 6, 2026. ↩ a b c
- FOX 13 (Adi Iyer), "Residents raise concerns over potential future of data centers in Carbon County," Oct. 7, 2026. ↩
- NPR (Geoff Brumfiel), "A startup wants to build a massive nuclear-powered data center on public land in Utah," Sept. 30, 2026. ↩ a b
- The Washington Sun (Mara Hoplamazian and Jade Lozada), "Trump Is Considering More Data Centers on Public Lands Than Previously Known," Sept. 18, 2026, update added after publication. ↩
ETV News pages reviewed
- ETV's site searches for "valar", "altigen" and "jurassic spark", saved from the searches' RSS feeds on Sept. 29 (valar) and Sept. 30, 2026; the links show today's results. The 50 items were read in full. ↩ a b c
- "Emery County Hosts Nuclear Public Hearing," June 18, 2025. ↩
- Policies (Terms of Use, last updated Jan. 10, 2020). ↩
- "Brock Johansen shares updates on Emery Telcom and economic development," Aug. 27, 2025. ↩
- "Carbon/Emery economic development committee discusses nuclear energy, business grants, and coal exports," July 6, 2026. ↩
- "Two major companies to launch new Silicon Slopes chapter: Silicon Slopes East," February 2020 (company release). ↩
- "Farm Bureau sponsors meet the Emery County candidates," March 31, 2026. ↩
- "Economic Development Committee discuss housing and well permitting," Jan. 30, 2026. ↩
- "Republican primary results released in Emery, Carbon Counties," June 23, 2026 (preliminary results). ↩ a b c
- "Orangeville City Council approves resolutions, discusses EMS and Valar," July 16, 2026. ↩
- "Growth, industry and community issues highlight Orangeville council meeting," Aug. 20, 2026. ↩
- Author page: Kevin Butler; the author of record is in each story's page data and in ETV's site feeds. ↩
- Contact Us page, "ETV News Staff": "Administration," "Kevin Butler | Manager," as photographed Oct. 10, 2026 (image above). ↩
Valar Atomics' own publications
- Valar Atomics (Isaiah Taylor), "Valar Atomics is Suing the NRC," April 7, 2025, "Our Vision" section, Ward One paragraph. ↩ a b
- Valar Atomics, YouTube channel, videos (39 videos as of Oct. 10, 2026). ↩
- Valar Atomics, "Carbon County Open House | Valar Atomics", Oct. 7, 2026. ↩
Recordings
- Audio recording of the Sept. 29, 2026 town hall, held by New Deseret Press. It runs 1 hour 31 minutes 42 seconds, from partway through Valar's opening remarks to about two minutes after Hardy was removed. Times are elapsed time in the recording. ↩ a b c d e f g h i j
- Carbon County Planning Commission, audio recording of the Oct. 6, 2026 meeting (posted Oct. 7, 2026). Times are approximate. ↩ a b c d
Public records
- Utah Trust Lands Administration board, Sept. 17, 2026: meeting transcript (auto-generated) and board packet. ↩ a b
- Bureau of Land Management, rights-of-way case records: Valar Atomics cases UTUT106784007, UTUT106801248 and UTUT106833224. ↩
- Carbon County Planning Commission, minutes of March 3, 2026. ↩
- Carbon Community Economic Development Board, minutes of April 21, 2026. ↩
- Carbon County Commission, minutes of May 20, 2026. ↩
- Carbon County, Planning Commission members, accessed Oct. 10, 2026. ↩
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "What are the Radiation Risks from CT?" (typical CT dose 1 to 10 mSv). ↩
- 30 U.S.C. 23, lode claims: discovery required before location. ↩
- Utah Code 40-1-2, location of mining claims and contents of the notice. ↩
- Valar Atomics Inc, Notice of Location, "RW 453" Lode Mining Claim, NW and NE quarters of Section 28, T14S R11E, Salt Lake Principal Meridian, Carbon County, located Sept. 12, 2026, as posted at the claim (photo submitted to New Deseret Press). ↩ a b
Other
- Christine Watkins, comment in the public Facebook group "Letter to the Editor and other news from Carbon County Citizens," Sept. 30, 2026 (screenshot above). ↩
- 47G, Jade Powell profile: "Deputy Director at the Southeastern Regional Development Agency (SERDA)." ↩
- Kevin Butler, public Facebook post after the Oct. 6, 2026 Planning Commission meeting (screenshot above). ↩ a b
- "Daniel Campbell for Carbon County Commissioner," public Facebook campaign page, post of Aug. 7, 2026 (screenshot above). ↩
Records compiled from these documents, at Valar Watch
- Valar's federal applications, mine-006 and mine-008; the state site-study applications, dir-035 and dir-037. ↩
- Worked check of Valar's CT-scan sentence, pf-007 (doses for five minutes holding Ward One's spent fuel, from the post's own figures). ↩ a b c
- The RW 453 claim and Valar's other routes to land, mine-027. ↩