NiCE Club @ UC Berkeley

Meeting - 6 February 2025

Repealing Anti-Nuclear Regulations

Notes from the meeting:

  • Meeting took place in Etcheverry 3106
  • 10 people in attendance
  • We went over time debating whether to include food irradiation protections in our bill
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Our New Green Tablecloth

Additional Notes from the Meetings

Ryan brought pizza from cheeseboard and people brought chips to share. Rohan joined online and we went through our petition proposal line by line following the advice of our legal advisor. A big portion of time was given to debating what types of nuclear technologies we wanted our ban repeal to cover. We want this ban repeal to allow for the peaceful use of nuclear materials within Berkeley's city limits. The three most relevant uses of nuclear materials for safe purposes is energy, medical treatment, and non-proliferation research. Our legislation mentioned the topic of food irradiation, which is a means of safely sterilizing food. This practice uses gamma rays to kill dangerous bacteria that grow in foods that are harmful to humans when consumed. Similar to UV light from the sun giving a sunburn, the food irradiation machine is like a brighter sun, much closer to the targeted food, that can very effectively kill the small parasites in food. The practice of food irradiation is currently banned within the city limits of Berkeley, and imported irradiated foods are required to have a label with the radiation trefoil. We thought that repealing the ban on food irradiaton would be a good opportunity to educate and influence public opinion on all of the positive uses of nuclear technology. Ultimately, we decided to remove this section from our proposal and focus on repealing only one area of the ban, the peaceful use of nuclear materials.