Janesville Blackhawk Golden Kiwanis

Blackhawk Golden ‘K’ General Meeting
Minutes
September 23^rd, 2026

President Richard Johnson presided, and called the meeting to order with a ring of the bell at 9:30AM.
An Executive Board meeting occurred today.

Richard Johnson led with the singing of America, the National Anthem, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Invocation: Carl Cramer, mentioning the ability to help the children.

Raffle: Dale and Doris Henning oversaw the ticket sales and drawing this week.
The weekly pot was $11 and the big (Joker) pot was $312.
Jerry Langdok drew a ticket from the bucket, ticket number 760.  Congratulations to the winner, Dave Peterson.
The deck of cards has 29/53 cards remaining.  Dave Peterson drew the 10♦.

Happy Box: Dave Peterson announced he is happy because he won the raffle, and is donating the proceeds to the Boys’ and Girls’ Club.
Ryan Lewis announced he is happy because the board have decided to move forward with forming a 501c3 ‘Foundation.’

Jokes: Joker Carl Cramer had a good joke.

Member Health: Ray Cummings had a status update on Dan Heerey, who is now in Slinger, Wisconsin.

Other Announcements: Linda Bontly spoke upon Meals on Wheels, for which the sign up sheet is being passed around.
Tom Neumann spoke upon a ‘Flu Shot’ event, which is in planning, for November.
Tom Neumann spoke upon the breakfast and induction ceremony, which is next week!
Tom Neumann spoke upon the bowling and lunch outing, which will be in the future, soon.

April Wright introduced the day’s speaker, Mike Gionet.  Mike has been working at SHINE Technologies for eight years.  During his time at SHINE, he has worked as a Nuclear Engineer , in the Training Department, and currently works on the Safety Analysis Team as a Criticality Safety Engineer.

Mike’s current job entails the proper handling of the sites’ uranium supplies.
Deuterium and tritium are types of hydrogen.

Previously, Shine had a Fitchburg location and now has the Janesville “Building One.”
Kiwanis member Ray Szczepaniak asked, “What was the approval process with Janesville?”  Mike replied, “Building One was 2018, when I started.  It was approved by the federal government in 2020.”

SHINE has a multi-phase plan.  Phase one was to use fusion for testing and expose things to radiation.  Phase two is to involve molybdenum-99, which is used for cancer treatment.

Currently, lutetium is being produced in Janesville.
Kiwanian Jenny Turco inquired, “How does lutetium target the cancer?”  Mike responded, “A pharmaceutical company drug does the targeting.”

Phase two involves the chrysalis facility.
Around 6% of the time, splitting uranium produces molybdenum-99.

The red tube is the accelerator. It sends atoms around 15 ft. down it, without air so the atoms do not bounce.  The atoms hit tritium at the bottom to produce fusion.
Kiwanis member Tom Neumann asked, “Does it produce much heat?”  Mike answered, “No, it produces a lot of kinetic energy.  The accelerator does have some cooling.”

Kiwanian Mel Lemirande inquired, “What is your particular task?”  Mike stated, “The uranium tanks have to be properly maintained.”

Kiwanis member Jim Farrell asked, “What interaction does Shine have with the Nuclear Regulation Commission?”  Mike replied, “The NRC approved us 5 to 6 years ago.  We are mandated to steadily follow that plan.  When the facility is completed, the NRC will test the operators and certify them.”
Kiwanian Bob Wilcox inquired, “How did SHINE decide on Janesville?”  Mike, (in short) “A gentleman worked on hard disk drives in Madison.  His business eventually moved to nuclear.”

Kiwanis member April Wright asked, “What is the source of the uranium?”  Mike responded, “It is mined.”

Jim Farrell inquired, “Do SHINE use the Rock County Regional Airport?”  Mike answered, “The lutetium goes across the world.  I’m not sure.”
Ray Szczepaniak asked, “Where are the byproducts used?”  Mike stated that will be discussed soon.

Kiwanian Ryan Lewis asked, “The facility appears to lack lead.  How is radiation kept in check?”  Mike answered, “Neutrons, gamma and beta photons are better filtered by concrete and water than lead.  There is much lead present in the construction.”

Jim Farrell inquired, “I recently read a book by Bill Gates about nuclear energy.”  Mike, during ensuing conversation, stated, “We currently, in the USA, have 99% viable nuclear waste.  Phase three involves reclaiming that energy as fuel.”
Nuclear accelerators are manufactured in the Fitchburg facility, named Heliopolis.
An assumption is that spent fuel can be reprocessed for five years.

Molybdenum-99 decays to technetium, used for treatment.
Kiwanis member Roger Willeford asked, “How much uranium do you start with?”  Mike, “Maybe around 80 gallons, which is probably equivalent to around 80 pounds.  It would fit in your hands.”
Phase 3A is to reclaim spent fuel, and 3B is that non-useful waste can be transmuted to atoms with shorter half-lives.
Ray Szczepaniak inquired, “Does artificial intelligence assist in the business?”  Mike replied, “It does, as far as a productivity level.  We have our own internal AI to ensure data is handled accordingly.”

Kiwanian Steve Skelly asked, “What size of a lot is SHINE using?”  Mike estimated, “Around 10 acres?  The farmland is not ours.”  Steve continued, “What has been invested to date?”  Mike, “Around 350 million so far.  The project is not yet complete.”
Mike’s presentation was well received and appreciated.

April Wright thanked Mike Gionet for speaking and presented him with a Kiwanis Parker pen.

President Richard Johnson extended a thanks to all the membership as he completes his presidency.

Richard Johnson adjourned the meeting with a ring of the bell at 10:55AM.

Reminders: The breakfast and induction ceremony is next week, at nine AM.

On this day:
1387 One of the most extravagant medieval English feasts ever recorded is held for Richard II and John of Gaunt in London, including 14 salted oxen, 120 sheep, 1,200 pigeons, and 11,000 eggs
1561 King Philip II of Spain forbids Spanish settlements in Florida
1642 Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, holds its first commencement
1779 John Paul Jones aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard defeats the British frigate HMS Serepis and becomes the United States first well-known naval hero
1806 Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis after exploring the Pacific Northwest and completing their Corps of Discovery expedition to the Pacific Ocean
1845 The first baseball team, the New York Knickerbockers, organizes and adopts a rulebook, known as the Knickerbocker Rules
1846 Johann Gottfried Galle and Heinrich d’Arrest discover Neptune
1862 US President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation is published in northern newspapers
1869 Mary Mallon—who later became known as Typhoid Mary, accused of causing multiple outbreaks of typhoid fever while working as a domestic servant in the United States—was born in Ireland
1875 Billy the Kid is arrested for the first time and jailed after receiving clothing stolen from a Chinese laundry but escapes two days later
1884 American Herman Hollerith patents his mechanical tabulating machine, beginning the era of data processing
1887 Tongariro National Park forms in New Zealand after a proposal by local chief Ngāti Tūwharetoa, becoming the fourth national park in the world
1889 Nintendo Koppai (later Nintendo Company, Limited) is founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda
1891 Vocational school Throop Institute, later California Institute of Technology (Caltech), is established in Pasadena, California
1912 Mack Sennett’s first Keystone comedy, “Cohen Collects a Debt,” is released
1926 John Coltrane, born this day in 1926, was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and composer who exerted as strong an influence on jazz in the 1960s and ’70s as Charlie Parker did in the 1940s and ’50s
1927 “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans,” directed by F. W. Murnau and starring George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor, is released (Academy Awards Unique and Artistic Picture 1927)
1930 German inventor Johann Ostermeyer receives a US patent for the flashbulb, initially marketed under the brand name Vacublitz
1932 Abdulaziz Ibn Saud merges the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
1938 Time capsule to be opened in the year 6939 is buried at the World’s Fair in NYC; it contains a woman’s hat, a man’s pipe, and 1,100 feet of microfilm
1945 First Cavalcade of Jazz outdoor concert is held at Wrigley Field, Los Angeles, featuring Count Basie, Valaida Snow, and others
1949 Bruce Springsteen, who became the archetypal rock performer of the 1970s and ’80s, was born in Long Branch, New Jersey
1952 “Kaw-Liga” single recorded by Hank Williams
1952 First closed-circuit pay-TV telecast of a sports event
1957 “That’ll Be the Day” single by Buddy Holly and The Crickets reaches #1 in the US
1957 Milwaukee Braves clinch NL pennant by beating Cardinals 4-2
1962 ABC’s first color TV series, “The Jetsons,” created by Hanna-Barbera, premieres
1962 Dave Brubeck and Louis Armstrong debut songs from “The Real Ambassadors”, a jazz musical loosely based on their experiences touring for the US State Department, at the Monterey Jazz Festival in California; libretto written by Iola Brubeck, Dave’s wife
1969 “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, premieres at the Roger Sherman Theater in New Haven, Connecticut
1970 IBM announces the System/370 Model 145, its first computer to employ semiconductors for main memory
1973 Largest known prime number, 2^132,049 – 1, is found with computer aid by David Slowinski and holds as the largest until 1985
1974 John Lennon’s single “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” featuring Elton John, is released in the US; it is Lennon’s only solo no. 1 single during his lifetime
1976 Soyuz 22 returns to Earth
1977 Cheryl Ladd replaces Farrah Fawcett on the TV show “Charlie’s Angels”
1977 Third test of Space Shuttle Enterprise
1980 Reggae legend Bob Marley’s final concert at Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1982 Columbia Records releases “The Nylon Curtain,” singer-songwriter Billy Joel’s eighth studio album
1983 Columbia moves to Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (Florida), for mating in preparation of STS-9
1988 Jose Canseco is baseball’s first player to steal 40 bases and hit 40 home runs
1990 President of Iraq Saddam Hussein says he will destroy Israel
1993 Paul Chu’s group reports superconductivity at -123°C (a record high)
1994 “The Shawshank Redemption,” directed by Frank Darabont and starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, is released
1999 NASA announces that it has lost contact with the Mars Climate Orbiter
International Day of Sign Languages.  The proposal for the Day came from the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), a federation of 140 national member organizations representing more than 70 million deaf people’s human rights worldwide. The resolution A/RES/72/161 was sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Antigua and Barbuda to the United Nations, co-sponsored by 97 United Nations Member States and adopted by consensus on 19 December 2017.
The choice of 23 September commemorates the date that the WFD was established in 1951. This day marks the birth of an advocacy organization, which has as one of its main goals, the preservation of sign languages and Deaf culture as pre-requisites to the realization of the human rights of deaf people. In 2026, the date also marks the WFD’s 75th anniversary, celebrating three-quarters of a century of work to advance the human rights of deaf people worldwide.
—
See You at the Pole is a yearly international event when Christian students gather at school flag poles, churches, and online for prayer and worship. The focal point of the day is when students meet at their school’s flagpole at 7 a.m. local time. The day takes place during Global Week of Student Prayer, a time when all students—public, private, and homeschooled—pray in various places throughout the week. Although adults—including pastors, teachers, and parents—are sometimes involved in See You at the Pole, their role is supportive, and students lead the day. See You at the Pole rallies, also known as Saw You at the Pole or See You after the Pole, are events that are often held on the evening of See You at the Pole. They are sponsored by local churches and local youth ministries and often include Christian music concerts, testimonies, drama, speakers, and worship.

Minutes by Ryan Lewis.
Credit: Dave Figi, and Ryan Lewis, photographs.

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