On the west side of the Salt Lake Valley, a 190,000-square-foot concrete fortress of a building is getting wired up to pump out the radioactive ingredients behind cutting-edge cancer scans and targeted drugs. Inside Nusano's new radioisotope plant, engineers are installing a 70-foot linear accelerator and a maze of magnetic tracks that will let a single particle beam split and hit multiple targets at once.
The system is designed to bend over backward for flexibility. An Ion Source generates charged particles, which are then accelerated to about one-sixth the speed of light before racing down the 70-foot accelerator and branching into as many as 12 tracks that slam into postage-stamp-sized targets, according to BioSpace. That architecture, BioSpace reported, is expected to give the facility roughly 15 to 30 times the production power of older cyclotron setups and to support simultaneous manufacturing of many different isotopes.
Nusano held a public ribbon-cutting in August 2025 that brought Gov. Spencer Cox and other state officials out to West Valley City, a photo-op that doubled as a signal of Utah's appetite for life-science manufacturing. The company said reservations and supply agreements were already in progress as it moves to scale the site toward continuous production, according to a Nusano press release on GlobeNewswire.
What Nusano Will Produce
Nusano says the West Valley City campus is built to manufacture more than 40 different radioisotopes, with the ability to run multiple production lines around the clock to keep up with clinical and industrial demand. The company pitches its linear-accelerator model as a way to move away from aging, reactor-based supply chains and to supply isotopes for diagnostics, oncology drugs, and even long-life “nuclear batteries,” according to Nusano.
Deals Already Lined Up
Drug makers are already locking in future supply. In October 2025, Clarity Pharmaceuticals signed a deal with Nusano for copper-67, with deliveries scheduled to start in mid-2026, a sign that developers are scrambling to secure domestic isotope sources as their trials move into later stages, per Clarity Pharmaceuticals.
Local Impact
Nusano currently employs more than 170 people in Utah and has told local outlets it aims to reach around 300 jobs over the next two years, giving a lift to West Valley City's Lake Park industrial corridor. Local officials and economic analysts say the project fits into a broader state strategy to grow life-science manufacturing and keep technical talent in Utah, with the sector delivering an outsized share of Salt Lake County's GDP, according to the West Valley City Journal.
Regulatory History
The road to opening day has not been completely smooth. A Salt Lake City zoning appeal filed in 2021 shows that Nusano initially tried to set up shop at 5843 W. Amelia Earhart Drive and spent months arguing that radioisotope production should count as light manufacturing. The appeal and supporting documents describe design measures the company said would keep emissions in check, including heavy shielding, HEPA and charcoal air filtration, and operating practices meant to keep public exposures far below federal limits, according to Salt Lake City planning documents.
What is next: industry and company materials outline a phased ramp-up, with some isotopes reserved or sampled in 2025, others, such as copper-67, targeted for mid-2026, and a BioSpace tour in April 2026, reporting that Nusano expects broader production capacity to come online by the end of 2026. “This is oncology. This is for patients,” accelerator operations manager Eric Dorman told BioSpace, in a nutshell, arguing that more domestic supply should help move therapies into clinics faster.
