The long-dormant Green River nuclear site in Utah has new sponsors and a new reactor design. Fulcrum Point Holdings, an affiliate of Utah-based Hi Tech Solutions, has formed a joint venture with Blue Castle Holdings to advance the project as a Holtec SMR-300 facility — the second site under Utah's Operation Gigawatt SMR strategy.
A $20 billion swing on a 19-year-old site
The JV is valued at roughly $20 billion over the lifetime of the build. Green River was first eyed for nuclear in 2007 and worked through years of meteorological, seismic, hydrology and ecological studies. A 2014 memorandum of understanding with Westinghouse to develop a two-unit AP1000 plant collapsed amid financing and water issues. Picking Holtec's smaller SMR-300 reduces the per-unit ticket and is intended to ease siting and water-use objections in the arid Colorado River basin.
Holtec's SMR-300 in the U.S. pipeline
Holtec International's SMR-300 is a 300 MWe pressurized light-water reactor that builds on the company's decades-old work in spent-fuel handling and small-reactor engineering. The U.S. Department of Energy this spring tapped Holtec alongside a $400 million Tier 1 award for light-water SMR deployment, anchoring a Palisades restart and a follow-on at the same site.
Why Utah keeps stacking SMR projects
Operation Gigawatt is the state's plan to lock in firm, carbon-free generation as data-center load surges and intermittent renewables fight transmission queues. The Green River JV adds to an earlier Utah SMR proposal and signals that nuclear procurement is becoming a state-level competition for the AI build-out, paralleling aggressive industrial-policy spend on chip and AI capacity.
Next steps
The partners will pursue site-development licensing under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission alongside long-lead procurement. Neither company disclosed a target online date, but Utah officials want first electrons before the end of the decade.
Reporting based on coverage from World Nuclear News, ANS Nuclear Newswire, KSL.com and Utah Business press releases.