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Brigham City • Gov. Spencer Cox and other state leaders are looking at a rural corner of northern Utah to become a hub of nuclear energy development in the Intermountain West.

The governor announced plans to build a training center and manufacturing plant in Brigham City Monday. In partnership with Holtec International, an energy engineering firm, and Hi Tech Solutions, a nuclear services firm establishing a new base in Utah, the city in Box Elder County will eventually build the components for a fleet of small modular reactors and ship them to locations throughout the region.

And at least two of the small nuclear reactor power plants will be built somewhere near Brigham City itself, officials said. No small modular reactors are currently operating in the United States, though several projects are in various stages of design and regulatory approval.

“Why Brigham City?” said Mayor DJ Bott at an event announcing the project. “Heck, why not?”

Cox said the partnership aligned with his Operation Gigawatt, an initiative to significantly ramp up power production in the state to meet growing demand.

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(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Brigham City Mayor DJ Bott speaks at an event in Brigham City, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. Gov. Spencer Cox announced plans to build a training center and nuclear manufacturing plant in Brigham City.

“The benefits of this project will ripple beyond, of course, just Brigham City,” Cox said, “… securing Utah’s role as a leader in nuclear powered generation for generations to come.”

The State of Utah signed a memorandum of understanding with Holtec and Hi Tech in April, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

Under that non-binding agreement, the state said it would support permitting and regulatory coordination with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agreement also expressed the state’s intent to collaborate with the companies and “align economic development tools.” It did not commit any funding to the partnership.

The reactors will prioritize safety, state leaders and other officials noted at Monday’s event. But rapid expansion of the region’s nuclear capacity is also a matter of national security, they said, citing concerns over artificial intelligence and energy competition with China and Russia.

“When I was growing up, we were in a nuclear arms race,” said Senate President Stuart Adams, referring to the Cold War. “Now we’re in an arms race for AI, and the country that controls AI will control the future of the world.”

Specific sites have not yet been selected for the manufacturing plant or small modular reactors, officials said.

“Before you can site a reactor, there’s a ton of work that has to go into it,” said Emy Lesofski, director of the Utah Office of Energy Development, in an interview. “It’s really important that communities want to host these.”

Small modular reactors are well suited to power data centers, officials said, which are rapidly coming online as the use of artificial intelligence grows. The power plants can also bring jobs and benefits that massive data center campuses often lack, Richard Springman, an executive with Holtec International, said in an interview.

“When you put them together,” Springman said, “the economic development package is actually a lot more interesting.”

He expects the manufacturing plant to employ around 300 people and the power plants to employ around 250. Construction of the facilities will support around 3,000 jobs, he said. And the Box Elder County-based small modular reactors could fire up sometime in the early 2030s, he said.

“Working back from the timeline, we need a manufacturing facility by ’27 or ’28, that timeframe,” Springman said.

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(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Main Street in Brigham City, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. Gov. Spencer Cox announced plans to build a training center and nuclear manufacturing plant in Brigham City.

Training programs for the nuclear facilities, which will be facilitated by Hi Tech Solutions, could take three to five years to get a full workforce up to speed.

The manufacturing facility will not use or store radioactive materials, he added. Instead, nuclear fuels will be shipped to the power plants themselves once built.

The partnership will also bring a diverse array of jobs to the Brigham City area, said Department of Natural Resources Director Joel Ferry, a resident of Box Elder County.

“A lot of people think the only people who work in a nuclear plant are nuclear engineers,” Ferry said in an interview. “You need the regular maintenance. You need welders and pipe fitters and mechanical engineers.”

The power produced by the two modular reactors will also likely be used locally, Ferry said.

“There’s significant demand in northern Utah,” he said.

Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority is working “to put this project together,” Adams noted. The economic development agency has helped build military research facilities and ski resort infrastructure, but officials did not provide details about the agency’s role in the Brigham City project.

“We’ve got Hill Air Force Base and other military installations that need large amounts of power,” Ferry said. “Energy security is national security.”

Hi Tech Solutions plans to bring more than 1,000 veterans into its nuclear workforce over “the next several years,” said company president and co-founder Chris Hayter.

“The greatest people that we have and we offer,” Hayter said, “ought to be given a new mission when their military mission ends.”