Polonium-210 Available Through Mail Order

Knutsi writes "InformationWeek is reporting that Polonium 210, the radioactive material used to poison former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko is not as hard to get your hands on as some have previously stated. American family business United Nuclear is actually selling the stuff, and other equally exotic materials, on their company website. Could come in handy for the xmas shopping season."

Comments

New level of cheating.

[grub]

I wonder how XBOX LIVE will dectect this?

UberL337: hey thanx 4 sendin over teh drinks!
TehD00d: NP mang.
[...]
UberL337: ug feel sick oh fukkk call ambulsafeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
TehD00d: Polonipnwed!!!

A Lump of Polonium 210...

[Otter Escaping North]

When a lump of coal just won't do...

Re:A Lump of Polonium 210...

[ptr2004]

There is already clarification on how they sell Polonium 20

http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm

Re:A Lump of Polonium 210...

[marcello_dl]

bet you weren't saying that when mossad squirted poison in that arab guy's ear.

Mossad uses Zunes on arabs? And Poison, of all distasteful bands... They seem always to reach new lows.

Not anymore

[jbeaupre]

I stopped in a few weeks back to buy some and some Russian dude in line ahead of me bought the last of it.

Feh

[gowen]

The Polonium available on United Nuclear's site can be purchased without a license because the level of radioactivity, 0.1 microcurie, doesn't pose a danger, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says.

Thanks slashdot, but if I wanted baseless scare mongering about the threat of nuclear material falling into the wrong hands, I'd join the Republican Party.

xmas gift

[truthsearch]

I think Bolonium is a much more appropriate holiday gift. After all, its atomic weight is deliciously snacktacular.

Re:xmas gift

[tkw954]

I think Bolonium is a much more appropriate holiday gift. After all, its atomic weight is deliciously snacktacular.

You said "snacktac-u-lar", it's "snackta-cle-ar", dummy.

Moo

[Chacham]

Who cares about Uranium, when we can have supermagnets!

Read the page, see the bait:

Two of these magnets close together can create an almost unbelievable magnetic field that can be very dangerous. Of all the unique items we offer for sale, we consider these items the most dangerous of all. Our normal packing & shipping personnel refuse to package these magnets - our engineers have to do it. This is no joke and we cannot stress it strongly enough - that you must be extremely careful - and know what you're doing with these magnets.

They even say "beware" elswhere. It must be good.

Can you even resist?

Luckily therse things cost money, or noone would care about the Flying Spaghetti Monster anymore. The Flying Magnetatorus would rule supreme.

Re:Moo

[Dachannien]

Among the most dangerous things you can give your small child are magnets - particularly the small pea-sized sort that are used in toys that are moved around on a platform by other magnets placed underneath.

If a child swallows more than one of these magnets, they can find each other through bowel tissue and clamp together, eventually killing the tissue that ends up between them due to lack of blood flow and possibly perforating the bowel.

The magnets they are talking about can break bones if you don't handle them correctly, and if you've ever handled smaller magnets before (who hasn't), you know that it can be tricky trying to arrange more than one magnet (even small ones) without allowing them to collide. You could probably also kill yourself with these magnets in freak circumstances.

One question, comrade

[Lane.exe]

Will work on moose and squirrel, yes?

Polonium and Smoking

[Venner]

I found it a bit amusing when they stated that Polonium was hard to obtain. It is actually drawn from the soil into Tobacco plants and is one of the Really Bad Things implicated in smoking and cancer (along with
the also-radioactive Lead-210, which emits gamma rays and decays into Polonium eventually.)

Polonium-210 is an alpha emitter - something you really don't want to ingest.
I'd have to look up dose-equivalents, etc, but if I remember correctly, it was estimated a two-pack-a-day smoker gets the radioactive equivalent of something like 300 chest X-rays a year. And remember that these are heavy metals that stay in the body for a long time!

Re:Polonium and Smoking

[selex]

Oh come on, why don't you people stomp my only joy in life some more. It causes cancer, it smells, it yellows your teeth, it stunts your growth, it makes you sterile, it slaughters small puppies with a chainsaw...and now its radioactive. Son of a bitch! I'm about to start smoking crack...seems less harmful.

Selex

Does the United Nuclear's webpage sell that too?

Re:I might be missing something.....

[Jerf]

Because there is nothing special about radiation.

Too many people think of radiation as this magical, unstoppable death ray; I call this the OMG RADIATION!!1! attitude.

Fact is, there's a whole whackload of far more dangerous things you can get your hands on legally and easily, not least of which is any number of guns, which are also very dangerous when handled carelessly or by an unskilled/untrained operator.

Cigarettes and alcohol are pretty dangerous too, and I couldn't even begin to list the deadly poisons we can stroll into any store and buy completely legally. You can start with the pest control isle, then add the majority of the cleaning isle, and then maybe a lot of the automotive liquids (antifreeze in particular is a dangerous thing if you've got pets or children around), then tack on much of the agricultural isle. Note that I'm not listing products, I'm listing store sections, because that's how readily available these things are.

Honestly, the only reason to prefer radioactive substances to poison someone is because it plays right into the OMG RADIATION!!1! attitude, which even here on "enlightened" slashdot is in ample supply. It's just another deadly poison; no less, but no more.

(To break yourself of the OMG RADIATION!!1! attitude, I recommend the following: Learn about background radiation levels. (If you think that "normal radiation" levels are "zero", you are firmly in the grip of OMG RADIATION!!1!.) Learn how X-Rays work and how they compare to background. Learn about how smoke detectors work; odds are very good that you are within a few tens of meters of an OMG RADIOACTIVE! substance. This will either break you of panicking, or give you a heart attack; either way you'll be free of OMG RADIATION!!1!.)

Ripoff

[Waffle Iron]

Don't buy this stuff... it's some kind of scam. I ordered a bunch, and I set it aside until I got around to needing it. About one year later when I wanted to use it, more than 80% of it had mysteriously disappeared into thin air! Talk about planned obsolescence... and this stuff ain't cheap. This is worse than inkjet cartridges.

Since then, I've found a place that will send me Polonium *209*. It costs more, but so far it doesn't seem have the self-destruct feature that the Polonium 210 shysters build into their product.

a great Wired article on United Nuclear

[pepax]

Check this out: http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry.htm l