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Science

The Cold War's Legacy of Mutation 55

Posted by michael from the third-eye-blind dept.
fm6 writes: "Not surprising, but still pretty sobering: Russian communities downwind from cold-war-era surface testing sites are experiencing 50% increase in mutation rates. I'm reminded of Terry Tempest William's term: Virtual Uninhabitants."
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The Cold War's Legacy of Mutation More

The Cold War's Legacy of Mutation

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  • So much for... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lars T. ( 470328 ) <{Lars.Traeger} {at} {googlemail.com}> on Tuesday February 12, 2002 @12:58PM (#2994706) Journal
    Is Evolution Over In Humans? [slashdot.org]

    • Re:So much for... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Stone Rhino ( 532581 )
      Evolution !=mutation.
      Mutation means the random changes that allow creatures to evolve, though that's not all these changes do. They also cause cancer and the like, and are the reason that radiation exposure leads to cancer.
      Evolution involves more than just these random changes, however. It also involves the recombination of these through sexual reproduction, and the survival of the best of them through natural selection. Therefore, the fact that mutation still is present does not mean that evolution will occur.
      • Whoa there... Lets not crack open that whole evolution can of worms so soon. I don't know if ./ can take another deluge of posts on this subject again. Besides, not everyone even agrees that evolution ever happened.

      • Re:So much for... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Zara2 ( 160595 )
        Evolution !=mutation. Sorry man, more mutations usually does indicate an increase in the speed of evolutionary change. IF mutations and random change of some sort is happening a certian small percentage of those mutations will be more (or less) useful for furthered survival of that organisms genes. The more mutation that occurs means that there is a better chance of a "good" mutation happening. Especially considering how rare a "good" mutation is. While most mutations will be bad an increace in mutations usually means an increace in ALL mutations, useful and detrimental. The really detrimental ones die off without passing on thier genes. Most traits and mutations dont ultimately matter and may or may not be passed on depending on other traits that organism has. (A non-useful mutation of a third nipple doesn't stop Marky-mark from getting laid.) And that one in a million benificial mutation that can also be passed on is evolution.
      • Mutation is the core ingredient of evolution. You would have a hard time arguing that allele frequencies have not changed, given excessive mutattions.
  • Make anyone else think of the X-Men? Mention of mutation always brings that to mind. [X-men theme plays in head]
    • You do know that was just a movie? Most mutations are quite unphotogenic [nando.net].
      • umm... k. X-men was not "just a movie." It was a movie, several series of comic books, a few animated series, and of course numerous computer games and other paraphenelia. So X-men is not "just a movie." Though I take it that your point is that not all mutations are like X-men.
        • Right, it was just a comic book with lots of fancy spin offs and tie ins. Obviously a comic book is far superior to a movie as a touch point for life and death issues like this one! After all, a comic book is literature!
          • Hey, I'm a fan of Alita and Sexylosers.com myself. I consider the whole literature-versus-junk thing pretty bogus. It's just that mass-market fantasies about radiation turning teenagers into superheroes is not the first thing that comes to mind when I read about A-bomb survivors in Siberia and Utah.
  • I imagine the spam "Now you can get a 50% increased chance of having the super powers you always wanted!!!". Coming to you from the same people who brought you "Want to be a SPY!?" and "Spank me HARD, make me wet"
    (titles taken from actual spam-messages I've gotten during the last couple of months)

  • Happened right here, too. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Deagol ( 323173 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2002 @01:58PM (#2995113) Homepage
    I don't know about mutations and such, but a few of the Southwest states had down-wind surprises delivered by the Nevada test sites.

    We just bought some rural property in southern Utah. My wife was searching for plant zone information for our area and happened across a link discussing the sterility and cancer rates of people in Cedar City and Parowan. I can't find that link, but a quick search turned up several relavent sites:

    http://www.downwinders.org

    http://www.eq.state.ut.us/EQRAD/fallout.htm

  • Don't forget the US (Score:4, Informative)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2002 @02:57PM (#2995488)
    http://www.nuclearfiles.org/maps/

    http://rex.nci.nih.gov/massmedia/Fallout/content s. html
  • A mutation in an intron isn't going to do much? Or ar they talking about people with extra fingers?

  • US & Nukes (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Mr.Ned ( 79679 )
    It's too bad everyone thinks nuclear power is the way of the future, if only we can contain the wastes. Never mind that, even when subsidized, it's still the most expensive way to boil water.

    What worries me is situations like this in the future. This is just (!) after some atmospheric testing. In 10-30 years, when all the US nuclear reactors go offline, all the fuel rods and other radioactive waste (I'm not sure, but I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable if I knew that I was drinking water formerly used as steam heated by uranium) have to be dealt with. Right now, as a previous [slashdot.org] slashdot story has noted, the US will be dumping its nuclear wastes in an earthquake-prone area likely to contaminate the water table in the area of Las Vegas. Even a small amount of radioactivity, as seen in this story, can cause mutation, to say nothing of the level of contamination during that Japanese disaster a decade or three back. Think about what happens when a large US city is exposed to bunches of radiation. It suddenly becomes not far off on another continent, but in our own back yard too late to do anything about it.

    Write your congressman about Yucca Mountain. Hope that state's rights prevail and the governor of Nevada can nix the project. It's our future. This isn't something like the DMCA or the SSSCA - this is nuclear waste in our back yard.

    • Re:US & Nukes (Score:2, Informative)

      by Komodo ( 7029 )
      Just as a matter of note, the water used to cool (American, commercial) reactors does not mix with the water used to moderate the reaction... eg, the water in the cooling towers never passed through the reactor vessel and is not radioactive, did not absorb neutrons, or anything like that.

      The water used in the reactor vessel passes through a heat exchanger and transfers the heat to another cooling system, and that's what ends up in the cooling towers. You'll never touch 'steam heated by uranium', it's 'steam heated by other steam'.

      Not all reactor designs are so safe. Be glad you live in the US. In former Soviet states, some reactors use liquid sodium as a moderator (at least, they use it in nuclear subs). I don't know all that much about power plants, but I've been told that this is very scary when it breaks.

      So forget the radiation, a more immediate effect than radiation is 'thermal pollution' - eg all that heat has to go somewhere, and in coastal areas, putting it back in the ocean basically kills the ecosystem deader than the radiation ever could.

      Hazards of an industrial civilization... but most of us would be dead already without it.
      • "So forget the radiation, a more immediate effect than radiation is 'thermal pollution' - eg all that heat has to go somewhere, and in coastal areas, putting it back in the ocean basically kills the ecosystem deader than the radiation ever could."

        Well I know of at least two studies that lasted over a decade and they both show mixed effects to thermal pollution. I.e., some species populations exploded in the 15 - 25F warmer area near the plant outfall pipes, and some species populations fell. As to the effects on marine plants, the noise level in the data was too high to really conclude anything at all (the variations observed were within the parameters of natural variations in plant growth).

        There is a definite effect, but is the effect of sufficient widespread damage to warrant shutdowns? I don't think so.
        • I don't think we should be shutting any plants down, either. All I'm saying is, let's not react first to the threat of 'radiation' because it's a big scary word. The bottom line is that everyone wants the benefits of cheap energy but nobody wants the waste products in their own back yard, and it's not as simple as 'Where do we put the fuel rods?'
    • I can't remember the exact number, but your average beer has something like 10-100 times the radiation than that of nuclear plant water. And yet people have no problem drinking beer...
      Talk to a Nuclear Physicist sometime, we live bathed in radiation our entire lives. All joking aside, we all glow in the dark on some wavelength. =P
    • ...even when subsidized, it's still the most expensive way to boil water.
      That could well be because there isn't anything like the investment in nuclear infrastructure that there is in most other energy sources. For example, camel dung is used as a fuel by lots of people around the world, but I'll bet you $50 boiling water with camel dung in New York City would be significantly more expensive than using any more common power source, simply because there isn't a large market for it, or a distribution system in place.
      Even a small amount of radioactivity, as seen in this story...
      The story didn't say how much radioactivity there was. Your prejudices are showing.

  • "Mr. President, we must not allow a mutation gap!"

    Sorry, anything concerning the cold war makes me think of Dr. Strangelove!
  • Interesting that they called it a "nuclear testing facility." Semipalatinsk was an inhabited area. There were also belowground tests according to accounts of people who lived there. (Detonations in abandoned mines.) Basically it was an area used to test the effects of extreme doses of radiation on an average community.

    Having seen the environment there, I'm surprised that there's still life there in any form. It's a fairly barren-looking area, and at certain places (such as the lake,) Geiger counters essentially let out a steady buzz even all these years later. There is also a lab filled with stillborn, mutated fetuses.

    I have seen many shocking instances of how depraved humanity can be. Public executions, nazi concentration camps, and similar things, but none stood out in my mind as boldly as Semipalatinsk. If nothing else makes it remarkable, it's the fact that this was done to their own people.

    Here are some info sites:
    http://www.isar.org/isar/archive/ST/Semipalatins k. html
    http://www.well.com/user/fine/journalism/kazakh. ht ml (Select all text if you find it unreadable on the laft side)
    http://www.newtimes.ru/eng/detail.asp?art_id=221
  • It appears that a small group of scientists who studied the area found that the ecosystem surrounding the site appears to be better off than when it wasn't radioactive.

    It seems that, at least in the short term, the animals and plants are better off with nuclear waste because humans have moved from these areas...kind of sad knowing your species is worse than cancer causing nuclear radiation isn't it?

    http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/chernobyl/wildlifepreser ve .htm

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