If your primary objective is to develop the unicorn of energy solutions, to find a way to power the world in a clean, safe, sustainable, and abundant way with virtually no waste, that alone is a pretty tall order. But that’s what Wisconsin-based SHINE Technologies is working on, and while they’re at it, they’re also helping fight cancer. And that pesky problem with traditional nuclear energy—what to do with the spent fuel—they’re quietly tackling that, too.
SHINE is fueled by some home-grown brainiacs, like Ross Radel, chief technology officer. He grew up on a little farm just north of Spring Green. He studied nuclear engineering at UW-Madison’s premier program, earning his undergraduate, master’s, and PhD. He’s humble and disarming, and really, really smart. Radel went to grad school with SHINE founder Greg Piefer, and they, along with the SHINE team that has grown to 400 people, are literally working to change the world.
The ultimate goal is to produce electricity using the same process that powers the sun and the stars—nuclear fusion. Traditional nuclear energy uses fission, which splits heavy atoms (like Uranium) into lighter ones, releasing powerful energy at a scale that is unmatched by any other generation process. Nuclear fusion combines light atoms into heavier ones to release energy, without the long-term waste created by traditional nuclear energy generation.
Across the country and around the world, nuclear fusion researchers have made such significant strides in recent years that some believe the potential for a commercially viable generation facility is just over the horizon, and could be a reality within 10 years. Wisconsin is home to four companies in the fusion race—in addition to SHINE, there are Realta Fusion, Xantho Technologies, and Type One Technologies, all headquartered in Madison.
But SHINE is taking a different path than the others. Recognizing early on how challenging it would be to stay in the game for the long run (many nuclear start-ups simply run out of money along the way), Piefer, Radel, and the team made a strategic decision to build in a few side hustles to keep the revenue flowing, because nuclear science presents many opportunities short of the holy grail of fusion energy.
“It started with things like neutron imaging or neutron irradiation services, with low-yield fusion systems. We’ve done things like landmine detection research,” Radel explained. “Our biggest markets we’re tackling today are medical isotopes.”
SHINE Technologies’ Chrysalis building in Janesville is a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility that will produce molybdenum-99 (Mo-99), a life-saving medical isotope used in over 40,000 diagnostic procedures daily across the United States to detect heart disease and cancer.
Making Moly-99
Specifically, SHINE is focused on Moly-99, a critical radioactive isotope primarily used in nuclear medicine. It helps detect cancer and heart disease through non-invasive imaging of the heart, lungs, and bones, and it’s used up to 50,000 times per day.
“The crazy thing is that literally none of that isotope is produced in the Western Hemisphere, and it hasn’t been for 10 years. The United States stopped producing it in the 80s, but Canada still had a reactor producing it until 10 years ago, so none of it is produced on this side of the planet at this point,” Radel said.
Ross Radel
Currently, Moly-99 is mainly produced in the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, and Australia. And the isotope has a short shelf life, so stockpiling is not an option. This means the U.S. is completely dependent on imports for critical medical imaging, but not for long.
SHINE is nearing completion of its Chrysalis facility in Janesville, which will use hybrid nuclear technology to meet up to half of the global Moly-99 demand.
(Sandia National Laboratories, where Radel worked for a decade, is also in the process of developing a domestic supply of Moly-99.)
SHINE is also producing Lutetium-177, a medical radioisotope used for both imaging and treatment of certain types of cancer, including thyroid cancer.
That’s some kind of side hustle.
Pathway to permitting
Much like a power plant project, SHINE’s leaders have been navigating the state and federal permitting process to build the Janesville facility, which will produce Moly-99, for about a decade. The timeline is the same because the process is the same. To build a plant that will use nuclear engineering, even for medical reasons, you must secure the same permits and comply with multi-agency regulations, as you would if you were building a nuclear power plant.
Streamlining permitting for utility infrastructure projects is a primary legislative goal for the Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association and its member cooperatives, because the process has become increasingly cumbersome, duplicative, and just plain long. That all adds up to increased costs, which are passed on to members.
Expediting permitting for nuclear energy projects is one thing both the Biden and Trump administrations agree on, even if for different reasons. The Biden administration recognized the benefits of safe, clean nuclear energy on the environment, while nuclear energy—fission or fusion—also supports Trump’s goal of “American Energy Dominance.”
Either way, Radel says in recent years, improvements in the permitting process are evident.
“We’ve seen a cultural shift at the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) through that time of really moving to an organization that takes its mission statement seriously,” he said.
As of January 2025, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) updated its mission statement to specifically guide the agency to work toward the “enabling” of nuclear technologies, as directed by the ADVANCE Act.
“They’re really doing it in a way that’s enabling things to get on the grid. I think that they’ve really taken that to heart,” Radel said.
SHINE employee manipulating hot cells during production of Lu-177, a cancer-fighting isotope, at the Cassiopeia facility in Janesville.
The value of spent fuel
The work SHINE does highlights the reality of nuclear fusion and fission that many people may not realize: nuclear technology does exponentially more good in the world than harm.
While clean, waste-free nuclear fusion energy is still in development, traditional nuclear fission energy continues to be a safe and efficient power source, supplying 20% of the nation’s energy, despite a decades-long stall in the construction of new nuclear plants. Nuclear energy generates more clean energy in the United States than any other source (55%).
Opponents of nuclear energy often raise the same concern: What about nuclear waste? It is perhaps the biggest barrier to nuclear energy expansion. Even though nuclear energy has been a primary source of American power for more than five decades, all the waste ever created could fit in a single football field, stacked less than 10 yards high.
It’s not on a football field, though; it is stored securely across the country at various locations, usually at current or former nuclear plants, because a national depository was never built.
SHINE is working on that, too. Not a location, but a solution, with benefits. According to Piefer, roughly 96% of spent nuclear fuel holds recoverable uranium and plutonium that has value. Additional metals and isotopes recovered from the waste have potential benefits that could be used in medicine, advanced manufacturing, and clean-power technologies. Apparently, spent fuel has more to give.
On that topic, the Department of Energy agrees. In February, it awarded more than $19 million to five U.S. companies, including SHINE, to research and develop recycling technologies for used nuclear fuel.
It seems like SHINE’s side hustles are more like groundbreaking, world-changing, innovative main hustles.
Still, Radel says, these other projects, remarkable as they may be, are still a means to an end, a way to stay solvent as they work toward the ultimate goal, but they are enjoying the journey.
“We work with lots of really sharp, technical people here, which is fun in and of itself. And trying to solve really tough problems is really energizing for the scientists, engineers, and support staff who come in every day. We are in it for the long haul here, to make sure we ultimately accomplish the vision of transforming the way the world is powered,” he said, adding, “The end goal was from the beginning, and still is, fusion energy.”—Julie Lund, photos courtesy of SHINE