Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu
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Secondly, I do not believe geneticists would support Dr. Caldicott's claim that a change in the DNA sequence of a single cell could cause a mutation resulting in an adverse change to a species (implied if not stated by the letter writer). Living things are constantly evolving, bad mutations are killed off by an organism's immune system. Organisms that suffer really bad mutations usually die before reproducing. One cell does not cause a species to mutate, a change is needed in a population to effect a change to a species. Or at least that was what I learned in History 101 at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. If there are geneticists out there that can enlighten us as to the latest thinking on this issue I'd really appreciate it.
1. One cell can't cause a mutation. Every cell has its own copy of DNA, and mutations occur on a genetic, not anatomical, level.
2. The likelihood of one cancerous cell becoming a tumor in its lifespan--measured in weeks--is practically zero, if not zero. There needs to be a relatively large number of cells affected. One particle or ray hitting one cell is not going to cause cancer or mutations.
3. The number of types of mutations that radiation could cause is incredibly large. The likelihood of an irrelevant mutation--left-handedness or hair color, for example--is much greater than an adverse effect.
4. We get a lot more radiation from nature than from nuclear power plants, so if these things aren't happening in nature they won't happen with nuclear power plants. People have significant amounts of C-14 in their bodies and these types of things don't happen.
5. Radiation has absolutely no effect--cancers, mutations, green vomit, etc.--until around 10,000 millirem.