Commentary
In July, as America turned 250, a reactor the size of a minivan went critical in the red-rock desert of Emery County, Utah.
The company that built it, Valar Atomics, isn’t a Utah company at all. It’s based in El Segundo in the shadow of the aerospace giants that once made Southern California the undisputed capital of American engineering.
But when President Donald Trump challenged American industry to bring a new nuclear reactor to life by Independence Day, Valar didn’t build its test site in California. It built it in Utah. That single fact says more about where these two states are headed than any think tank report could. …