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UK Lab Traces Polonium To Russian Nuclear Plant
reporter writes "British authorities had identified polonium 210 to be the radioactive poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who defected to Great Britain. Now, according to a disturbing report, the authorities have identified the source of the poison to be Russia. Bloomberg ominously reports, 'Scientists at the U.K.'s Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, west of London, have traced the polonium 210 found in London to a nuclear power plant in Russia, the capital's Evening Standard newspaper reported today. Officials at the establishment didn't return calls.' A cold chill just fell on relations between Russia and the West." In another twist to this developing story, the shadowy Italian security consultant who dined with Litvinenko has also fallen ill with radiation poisoning.
The Second Cold War begins...
The article doesn't say... Do they know if it came from a reactor near Moscow, or if it came from a reactor on the periphery of Russia? That is, does Russia have plausible deniability by saying that rogue agents unattached to the central government did it? Or is it clear that the assassination was ordered by the higher-ups in the Russian government?
A cold chill just fell on relations between Russia and the West.
An even bigger chill will occur if we get too uppity with Russia about this. As a major supplier of European natural gas, we could be sitting freezing in our homes within a week or two if Russia turned off the taps. We have been on the verge of a gas crisis here in the UK for some time now.
Diplomacy cuts both ways, and I dare say the UK government isn't going to push this too far given the energy situation.
I don't suppose anybody could tell *when* this radioactive material was made in Russia. Perhaps it was actually made in the Soviet Union? If so, then nobody can say for certain that the Russian government is responsible for this... bigger things went missing when the government changed, IIRC.
I can't see a reason why the Russian government would poison the former spy so long after he defected. The death wasn't exactly instant, so if they were worried about some secret he hadn't told yet this wasn't the way to go.
Also of note is that the Russian government is perfectly aware that we can trace radioactive elements to their source. They also know that if you spray an area with mist then lead your target through the area that the person leading will *also* get sprayed with the same mist.
To me this whole thing seems just a bit wrong... while it was by no means a simple plot, it doesn't seem to have been very well thought out if it was done by the Russian government. Unless of course it *wasn't* done by the Russian government, or even by someone who wants relations between the west and the Russians to deteriorate. I'm not normally a big fan of conspiracy theories and I certainly can't think of anyone who would benefit...
The only logical thing I can think of is a rouge person or small group with a grudge against the former spy.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
*note* I feel sorry for the families for their loss, this post is not ment to sound as thouhg I mean otherwise.
This is a terrible event for nuclear energy. Directly connecting murder to radiation poisoning to only-in-nuclear-plants-production is devistating for public opinion. It won't matter that radiation generated by polonium can't even pentrate paper, let alone paper; that it is lethal (if ingested or inhaled) is what will stick in people's mind. Worse yet, news reports other people unrelated to the victims showing signs of minor levels; one analyst called it the 'equivalent of a dirty bomb' which is ludicrous but it'll still going to stick in the public's mind just as we really need to start developing new nuclear plants and technology.
Demented But Determined.
I doubt they cannot determine which reactor produced the material based upon the alpha radiation pattern, but it might be possible if they actually have an actual sample (for instance removed from his stomach).
liqbase
Before people start saying this is obvious proof of Putin's guilt, stop and think about it. Why would anyone EVER use polonium to kill someone? Radioactive substances are probably the one of the most controlled substances in the world, with only a relatively small number of places they can even be produced. I can think of fewer weapons that would leave such an obvious trail.
If someone wanted only to kill this Litivinenko to silence him, or for revenge, or whatever, there are a million easier and more convert ways to do it. Poisons that are just as effective and less traceable, bullets, hell even a car bomb would have been better. The fact that someone went to all the trouble of using polonium to do the deed makes this either a well funded and stupid assassin, or a well funded assassin whose true ends are much more complicated than simply killing a retired KGB man.
Meta, Meta, Meta
As someone that spent several years recently (2001 - 2004) in Russia, the location of the reactor doesn't much matter. The government in Moscow is just as corrupt as anywhere else (we bribed low level officials all the time for registration [simply put - people aren't paid enough and often turn to outside sources of income]).
I don't think any higher up (in organized government) would be dumb enough to order a hit this sloppy. The FSB, underfunded and undermanned as they are, is still very professional. They (the FSB) would have known that the radioactive elements would be traced. Personally, I'd bet this was done by some elements of government that are mafia (very common and they can afford to be sloppy since they are much harder to track). The dead guy had a long history of making enemies...
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
I'm sure that I'm not the only person here from the UK who is getting sick or the way that the mass media is hyping up this. Yes the poor guy was killed with something that is radioactive. So what? It emits alpha radiation. The radiation can't penetrate the skin. If you go by what the papers are saying you would get the impression this is on the same level as a nuclear bomb. It is a sad reflection on how our society has gone that the media are hyping this up to unbelievable levels, and people are swallowing it. Simply because something radioactive was used. From what I have heard, the radiation is secondary here. The metal is toxic if you ingest it anyway. So why play up the radiation? Because people don't understand it. I hate the mass media, they play to peoples' fears and always report on what they think will get the biggest reaction. If they could just cut it out I might be tempted to actually buy a newspaper more often.
It looks as though the Italian contact with Litvinenko is safe and isn't suffering any radiation sickness, though he was admitted to the hospital with concerns of massive radiation poisoning. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,19 62535,00.html
The unexamined life is not worth living
...the first cold war never ended.
The neocons prematurely declared victory when the soviets imploded from within with their socialist disaster.
Even more salient is the fact that many of these tribal theocrats that we are fighting in the GWOT are those that our US tax dollars created and propped up ourselves are a counterbalance to the godless commies.
It seems a perfectly valid argument that we never won the cold war, we are still fighting it and paying for it, and war with Eurasia has merely been replaced with a war on East Asia.
Actually, just swallowing the source and having it pass through your system is unlikely to do serious damage. Intestinal mucus would probably block the alphas pretty nicely. The source would have to be in a bioavailable (absorbable) form - i.e. some bare metals or preferrably a soluable salt.
-b.
Not sure exactly what you meant to ask, but here goes.
Alpha radiation can't penetrate skin. So superficial contact with an alpha emitter isn't really a concern. OTOH, if you ingest/inhale an alpha emitter (like polonium 210), then your internal organs can be exposed to it. This, obviously, is a bad thing. In polonium's case, IIRC, it's soluble in bodily tissues, and has a very short half life of 138 days, so it's quite dangerous (remember that half life and radioactivity are inversely linked).
Beta, gamma and neutron radiation are somewhat different. Those can get through skin, so superficial contact is a potential concern. Beta is blocked by aluminum foil (get out your tinfoil hats!), gamma and neutron require denser materials such as lead, or thicker, less dense materials like deep soil. Neutron radiation has the added hazard of neutron activation (it can render previously safe materials radioactive).
Additionally, ionizing radiation from sources other than radioactive decay, like X-rays and UV, can generally be bad for your health; these can be seen as less serious than gamma radiation, but more serious than alpha (UV is blocked by sunblock for example). Non ionizing radiation is de facto harmless, barring intensities severe enough to cause thermal burns.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
1. Deadly polonium traced to Russian nuclear plant
2. Plot Thickens as Spy Poison is Traced to a Nuke Plant in Putin's Russia
The second source suggests that the isotope composition is the signature that identifies a specific power plant. However, the Atomic Weapons Establishment declined to give the location of the plant.
I am sticking to my original guess of the culprit: a renegade group in Russia. Various reports have indicated that numerous factions, answering to no one, operate within the Russian government. One of these factions likely committed the crime.
Putin is just too smart to kill someone in such a blatant way. He would have known that such a gruesome murder would have serious negative consequences.
in soviet russia the... hang on, I'm not feeling to well... /slumps over keyboarddddddddddddddddddddd...
From the editorial of this week's New Scientist:
Nobody else has this sig.
Ah, well smoke detectors use Americium:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium
Which is indeed radioactive (and a gamma emitter to boot), but has a longer half life than Polonium (hundreds of years instead of hundreds of days). Remember that decay is a finite process; the longer it takes to finish, the less radiation is emitted per second. So Americium isn't as strong as Polonium.
Plus, the quantities used in smoke detectors is small - less than a microgram. You'd need an awful lot of smoke detectors to amass a dangerous amount of Americium. That doesn't mean you couldn't kill somebody, but it's a poor choice to slip into food or drink.
What makes Polonium an attractive poison is the lethal dose. You don't need to slip much into someone's food to kill them. Other alpha emitters aren't as good candidates in this regard. Now, as to why they used a radioactive poison in the first place, I don't know; perhaps they wanted to send a message?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
London - Londonistan - is now home to a large Russian community as well as a simply huge floating population of "businessmen" and chancers from all over the world. It's hardly a surprise that from time to time they turn out to bring somewhat unorthodox business practices with them as well as some undeclared duty-free items fresh from the reactor core. A former British Intelligence boss has pointed out that this is about the tenth high-profile contract killing involving Russians and not a single one has been solved. Besides, poisoning is a particularly dark crime and appeals to the ghoul in most of us, hence a lot of the publicity.
I think people forget the massive loss of face the Russians suffered when communism collapsed. Perhaps the Kremlin want to repair some of that damage and get back to what they believe Russia should be doing, which is running the world and dictating its energy policies. I guess the good news is that the Russians are usually too disorganized and hung-over to be much good at that.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
All of this could be a publicity stunt for the next Bond film? We probably won't find out who was really behind these sinister actions until........ you go see the movie
Alpha-radiation poisons are one of the very few poisons where even if you identify the poison that was administered, there is nothing you can do. In essence, once you have administered the poison, the guy is dead. Even if he doesn't know it yet. As for why they didn't use good ol' fashioned lead poisoning... I suspect that it is harder to find out who administered polonium as opposed to a couple of slugs to the head.
This does denote a very sophisticated organization though. Polonium is not easy to obtain, and most people don't think polonium when they want to off someone. As a matter of fact, the method of death often points to the group - everyone's got their favorite methods.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
those whacky Russians
When you have a radioactive material created in a reactor, say plutonium, by measuring the quantity of the different isotopes and their half life by product, you can determine from which reactor they come (that is if you have the data) and even "when". Now in that case that would mean they have traced a cocktail of element beside the polonium and the "ratio" match the polonium produced by that particular reactor. What make it a bit implausible for me is that we are speaking of really small quantity here from stuff which have a half life beyond a year... And especially if you refine the polonium and separate it from the rest.
I also have an opinion on that murder if it interrest anybody :
I have a conspiracy theory for you: foe of putin where seeing that putin position wasn't that bad right now, and they wanted a quick way to dredge dirt on him. So they procurated polonium then killed a resident in another country which was a vocal agaisnt Putin in a so SPECTACULAR way that it will be for a long time all over the media with all finger pointing at Putin. I do not see what Putin wins by making it so spectacular. True other vocal group might get afraid, but with it all over the media they might be emboldened to go forward and be more vocal, so that it will be even more difficult to elimnate them. No I think an old fashionned car "incident" and an old fashionned "push" in a train station at rush hour or an even more old fashionned slithing of throat would give as much a signal to the other vocal people without even being able to point finger at Russia. But polonium ??? Come on, they could have as well have tatooed "Putin killed me" on the forehead of the guy. This is why I think it is more convoluted and simply guys wanting to pee on putin did this to slime him all over. It looks like it was a total success from what I see in our media...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Have I missed something? A former spy gets killed by the country he was spying on/for/whatever... were talking about spies, they trick whomever they can to make a buck. Now, he got killed by the person he tricked. What's the big deal? This is not abnormal. If he was spying on the US we might have just offed him ourselves via the legal system.
"i stand on the edge of destruction" -shai hulud
He said that the government, Putin, deliberately bombed the apartment blocks in 1999 to create a pretext to start a war with Chechnya. He also said Putin was a secret pedophile. That should do it.
Keep in mind that Russia is currently in talks regarding joining the WTO. And don't listen to the sweet words - joining WTO is a serious blow, if not instant death for Russian industry and agriculture, and Putin knows it. He can't just plainly refuse - that would be very ill-conceived by both the West and pro-West population in Russia (actually, a significant part of it, if not the majority). That's why he's got to do something disgusting so there is at least one WTO member with a veto right which will have no other way but to block Russia's entry. I believe this was the same reason behind the sudden scandal in Russian-Georgian relations two months ago, since Georgia IIRC is a WTO member with a veto right (again, IIRC, all WTO members have a veto right on such decisions). If everything is as I pictured, this is a very smart move, since Mr.Blair look strange if he didn't veto the decision to accept Russia.
The Health Physics Society has produced a fact sheet (PDF-format) for Po-210. The information is fairly basic, but it's a starting point if you want to explain about the nuclide to someone who isn't very familiar with nuclear science.
"But it's so elegant."
The murder makes headlines the world over before the guy even actually dies, and you call this "elegant?" Elegant compared to what, the average GTA game? More elegant than dropping a piano on his head? WTF?
You don't get away with murder either with such an exoctic and obvious poison, nor nor by murdering others around him in exactly the same, easily-identifiable way, giving investigators yet more evidence to work with. Elegant would have been some chemical substance that has all the earmarks of heart disease or some other common killer.
My God, if this is what passes for "elegant" in the field of murder these days, no wonder prisons are overflowing with captured criminals.
"It's beautiful. Nobody other than state-sponsored assassins would have the resources"
EXACTLY! Narrows that list of suspects right down, doesn't it? If it weren't for the fact that nuclear security in Russia is a joke, if the Russian government actually did this, they'd have a better chance of deflecting blame and avoiding suspicion if they just sent a MiG over his house to drop a bomb down his chimney!
If this is a state-sponsored political assassination, this is the worst one evar. Tin-plated generalissimos in banana republics do a better job of disappearing enemies. It is far, far more likely that this was done by somebody with the mentality of a 12 year old in an effort to blame the Russian government for this. Heck, I'd believe that this was done by those who believe themselves to be friends of the Russian government, because then the rationale of the motive would be as stupid as the actual murder.
You're a major nation, and you can't pull off a simple hit? I mean, it's pure evil, but if somebody gave me the job I don't think it would take me too long to find a mobster, tap into his network, and get a decent hit-man who could pull off a plausible "robbery" where the guy got shot, or a car "accident" or even the good old standby like a bomb wired into the ignition. But NooooOOO. They had to go scattering radioactivity that would produce collataral damage, potentially ruining international relationships, and best of all... leaving a trail of radioactive breadcrumbs leading right back to the source!
What are they going to do to the guy who came up with that idea? Send him to China and then explode a dirty bomb in his apartment in downtown Beijing?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of Putin: is he the sort of man who would get the polonium-210 from his own nuclear reactor or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would get the polonium-210 from his own reactor, because he would know that only a great fool would put the evidence within reach. I am not a great fool, so clearly I can clearly not believe the evidence in Russia. But he must have known I was not a great fool, he would have counted on it, so I can clearly not believe the evidence in front of me.
[TMB]
"That's typical" of exotic radioisotopes, he said. "We can't compete with their prices." Furthermore, this substance could be extracted from off the shelf anti-static devices, and still be "traced" to a Russian source. Nothing to see here, the chill the poster felt was their own lack of understanding.
An unremarkable death of a dissident by random accident, common crime, or seemingly natural causes makes no notoriety. It might get rid of the immediate disident, but it will not prevent other disidents from 'causing trouble'. Killing a disident via a not-so-subtle and paticularly gruesome manner sends an unmistakeable message. The message is 'obey, or this could be you'. Killing him overseas means 'we can get you anywhere, anytime'. They want people to know, because fear is an effective means of suppressing dissent.
Russia is dangerous. It is nationalistic, it is autocratic, it feels humiliated and condescended upon by the West, it is paranoid, it is jealous, and its economy is fragile and only propped up by the current run-up in oil and gas prices. It only needs a ruthless populist (read 'demagogue') to push it over the edge to full-on fascism. It already has pretext for expansion based up the plight of ethnic russian minorities in its former empire.
Just a dangerous is that for a nationalist Russia, this would be a rational and likely succesful course of action. Russia need but bluster and Europe will cower, while the US is busy elsewhere. Russia would be able to get away with suppressing internal dissent and perhaps annexing some of their neighbors, and they know it. Europe is not psychologically prepared to fight WW3 over the Baltic nations, or Ukraine, or Trans-Dneister and the Russians know this. They need not fear any UN action because they possess a veto in the Security Council (not that the UN is to be feared by anyone anyway, its last meaningful military action was Korea in the 1950s).