The University of Notre Dame, USA (Becchetti et al, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Res.A505, 377 (2003) and later the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (Lichtenthaler et al, Eur. Phys. J.A25, S-01, 733 (2005)) adopted a system based on superconducting solenoids to produce low-energy radioactive nuclear beams. In these systems the solenoids act as thick lenses to collect, select, and focus the secondary beam into a scattering chamber. Many experiments with radioactive light particle beams (RNB) such as 6He, 7Be, 8Li, 8B have been performed at these two facilities. These low-energy RNB have been used to investigate low-energy reactions such as elastic scattering, transfer and breakup, providing useful information on the structure of light nuclei near the drip line and on astrophysics. Total reaction cross-sections, derived from elastic scattering analysis, have also been investigated for light system as a function of energy and the role of breakup of weakly bound or exotic nuclei is discussed.