Former Southwest Philly refinery site will become home to nuclear life science facility

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The first life sciences tenant at the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery site broke ground Wednesday on a 250,000-square-foot custom manufacturing facility.

TerraPower Isotopes, part of a nuclear science company founded by Bill Gates, plans to invest $450 million in the facility to manufacture actinium-225, a rare radioactive isotope being tested as a targeted treatment for cancer.

“I believe what this company and industry is doing can change the way that cancer is treated,” said Scott Claunch, president of TerraPower Isotopes. “The site we’re breaking ground on today is how we make it happen at the scale that the world needs.”

TerraPower Isotopes already manufactures actinium-225 at a smaller scale at its lab in Everett, Washington. The company said the site, which the owners call “The Bellwether District,” will be its “flagship” manufacturing facility for the isotope, and will increase worldwide production of the material “20-fold.”

TerraPower Isotopes plans to start production at the former refinery site in 2029.

Harvesting a rare isotope from radioactive material

Actinium-225 is not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for commercial cancer treatment, but is being tested in clinical trials to treat cancers including breast, prostate and myeloid leukemia.

TerraPower Isotopes will harvest actinium-225 from an amount of radioactive thorium equivalent to the mass of about 20 paper clips during its decay process, Claunch said. The thorium is extracted from the federal government’s inventory of uranium left over from the Cold War, and shipped on roadways from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to TerraPower Isotopes’ facilities.

Demand is growing globally for actinium-225 but supply is limited, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center. Claunch said currently, the amount of actinium-225 produced worldwide is equivalent to just a few grains of sand.

“When [the site] comes online in 2029, we will increase global production capacity by 20 times,” Claunch said. “A few more grains of sand.”

TerraPower Isotopes plans to ship its actinium-225 to drug developers that will attach the isotope to targeting molecules that Claunch said can act like GPS systems inside patients’ bodies.

“That then gets injected into a patient who has disease, and that final product makes its way just to the cancer cell and destroys just the cancer cell, saving nearby healthy tissue,” he said.

Claunch said the company will install hot cells, chambers that contain the radioactive materials and allow workers to safely handle the substance through mechanized arms. He said the manufacturing of the isotopes will not pose a health risk to employees or nearby residents. The company will also need to comply with Pennsylvania’s radiation protection regulations.

“We have safeguards in place, we have containment systems in place to make sure that our people, our personnel at the site, as well as the general public are very well protected,” Claunch said.

Taxpayer-funded incentives and nearby research institutions lure company to Philly

TerraPower Isotopes considered 350 sites across the country for its actinium-225 manufacturing facility, but ultimately chose The Bellwether District because of Philadelphia’s infrastructure, the skilled workforce in the area and the site’s proximity to research institutions and pharmaceutical companies, Claunch said.

Pennsylvania offered the company $10 million to locate at the site — $7 million from a Pennsylvania Strategic Investments to Enhance Sites grant and $3 million from a Pennsylvania First grant. The company could also eliminate most of its state and local taxes by utilizing Pennsylvania’s Manufacturing Tax Credit, Qualified Manufacturing and Innovation Reinvestment Deduction and tax breaks from its location in a Keystone Opportunity Zone, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development said.

The Bellwether District is also part of the state’s Permit Fast Track Program, which coordinates state agency review of projects to streamline the permitting process at specific sites.

“Under Gov. [Josh] Shapiro, we’ve been much more aggressive and competitive than ever in our efforts to win projects like this — projects that create jobs, that spark the regional economy and that tell the world that Pennsylvania is open for business,” said Rick Siger, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.

TerraPower Isotopes has promised to create 225 full-time jobs, and another 500 temporary construction jobs at The Bellwether District site.

“The people that we employ in Philadelphia will live and work in Philadelphia,” Claunch said.