"Is it possible that those irradiated viruses that "appear to be unaffected" can actually be mutated into a more virulent strain? "


Of course this is possible.  Does anything have a probability of 0.0?  Possible is the entirely wrong question to ask.  A more meaningful question would be what is the probability of a more virulent strain being produced by radiation?  The answer to that question  is simple.  By far the most dangerous radiation in terms of producing such a mutant is naturally occurring back ground radiation.  Such radiation is mild enough to induce all kinds of mutations, yet not near the dose required to kill the viruses.  So artificially radiating the product to kill microbes is trilions of times less likely to present a mutation hazard versus not radiating them artificially as dead microbes are not infective.

Dick

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