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JohnWW
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Here is even more motive for the KGB to have "done in" the Colonel; Yukos is the major oil company in Russia, which was "privatised" in a sordid deal
in which it ended up in the hands of the son of an old Communist Party boss who had gotten rich by taking bribes and having his hand in the government
till for decades:
Dead Russian Spy was israeli Double Agent
Murdered Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko passed documents to former Yukos CEO in Israel months before his death . . .
November 25, 2006, 9:10 AM (GMT+02:00)
Leonid Nevzlin, former CEO of the oil giant and current chairman of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, says the former Russian spy came to Israel with
classified documents on Yukos which may be damaging to Russian leaders. Nevzliln estimates that Litvinenko's death was connected with this
information, which he has handed to London police investigators of the murder.
DEBKAfile's intelligence sources add that the Russian ex-spy is believed to have been a double agent, who sold trade secrets to different parties in
and outside Russia, among them some of the Russian oligarchs living in exile in the West. Livinenko served as a colonel in a Russian Federal Security
Services unit which investigated and carried out special operations against businessmen.
British police found traces of the radioactive Polonium 210 in Litvinenko's urine.
The London media accuse Vladimir Putin of being behind the murder which they claim was politically-motivated.
Sure as heck puts israeli relations with Russia in a whole new different light.
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/153
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enhzflep
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Certainly, Po is by no means easy to come by, with an estimated global total yearly production of just 100 grams! 
Mind you, 1 gram of it can create energy at a rate of 150W! And accordin' to wiki, the amount required to effect death is practically non-existant.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium,
"At a committed effective dose equivalent (CEDE) of 5.14×10−7 Sieverts per Becquerel (1.9×103 mrem/microcurie) for ingested 210Po and a
specific activity of 1.66×1014 Bq/gram (4.49×103 Curies/gram)[4] the amount of material required to produce a lethal dose of 10 Sieverts would be
only 0.12 micrograms (1.17×10−7g). The biological halflife is 50 to 30 days in humans.[5]
Interesting for a number of points. Firstly just for the "wow!" factor, did you get that the first time? One gram of Po is able to deliver 10 Sieverts
(lethal dose) to over 8 million people,
But thinking about 1/2 life and the lethal dose again, although hard to come by even by nuclear standards, nothing's impossible. My point is that even
a source that was 7.5 years old would have 0.9 ug remaining. Just pissing in the wind here, let's say a Po containing compound was 50% Po. In that
case, Our 1 gram sample would now contain 0.45 ug. By dispersing 300mg into a drink, the lethal dose would be delivered.
If however, the source was far newer & additionally the compound was greater than 50% Po then clearly the quantity required to poison somebody
would drop rather rapidly.
Going on the effects of the poor chap, I'd be somewhat hesitant to say I thought he got 10 Sv. His symptoms and the timeline of his decline seem to be
more in the realm of 7-8Sv or less. But everyone's different I guess. Also, the body can endure a greater quantity of low level radiation than it can
short-duration, high intensity radiation. So 'spose it's really anyone's guess for at least a few days.
Although I reckon it's far from likely, given the ability to store a sample of it for a relatively short period, it could still have just been an
underword hit, russian style. 
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pantone159
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If all you need is a few tenths of a microgram of Po-210, this is actually not hard, but very easy to get, as a consumer product even.
'Staticmaster' anti-static brushes have an element containing 250 microcuries of Po-210, which I calculate as around 50 ng (0.050 ug). US$ 9 each for
the antistatic element with the Po.
These things are cool demonstations of alpha radiation btw, if you have a geiger counter that can detect alphas. (It needs to have a mica window to
allow the alphas, which have very low penetration ability, to enter the detector.) If you hold the brush 5 cm from the counter, it reads basically
nothing but background. Move it to 0.5 cm away, and, with a new element, I overload my detector.
Sometime ago I calculated the lethal dose as 2/3 ug (don't remember the references), which is 13 of these things. For 0.12 ug dose, it is just 3 of
them.
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MargaretThatcher
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Po-210 has a Dose Coefficient of 5.14 x 10E-7 Sv/Bq when ingested. From this and the half-life, you can calculate the lethal dose. This is a fraction
of a microgram.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses. - Bertrand Russell
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vulture
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| Quote: |
The Po-210 and any chemical poisons must, therefore, have been somehow smuggled in by the KGB other than through ordinary passengers' baggage, mostly
likely in diplomatic baggage which is immune to search, and quite possibly on board a special diplomatic plane, being thereby delivered into the hands
of the KGB attache in the Russian Embassy. |
Lol, how many miles of unprotected shore does the UK have? And you think they'd bring it in through air?
One shouldn't accept or resort to the mutilation of science to appease the mentally impaired.
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pantone159
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Po-210 would be trivial to smuggle successfully. It emits only alphas, which have almost no penetrating capability. A thin glass vial (or anything
else, even 5 cm of air) would absorb absolutely all of this radiation, so detectors would record zero.
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unionised
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If we are really talking about a handful of static eliminators then I don't think we need to think about smuggling.
"Oh, yes- those; I'm bringing them in to sell in my record shop- you know how it is- with CD's and that, most of my customers have switched from
vinyl. I need something to keep the customers interested. They are worth about £XXX What's the duty on that and will you take a cheque?"
This seems to have changed slightly from "Only the KGB could do this".
As pantone has pointed out it would be difficult to transpport these in a way that the alphas were not screened- a plastic carrier bag would do.
BTW, the KGB don't exist anymore.
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JohnWW
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The KGB have merely changed their name to FSB - the Federal Security Bureau. Nothing else has changed.
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unionised
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True, the KGB have just been relabeled. But the rest of the world has changed.
For example, imagine that some group of, let's say, Chechen fighters, wanted to discredit Putin and his government. If they were to kill some
reasonably well known defector in such a way that everyone says "This looks like the KGB" they would achieve that objective with no real risk of being
found out.
There are other terrorist groups who would benefit from worse relations between the East and West.
Gulf war 1 had East and West in agreement- the coalition won.
Gulf war 2 has just bits of the West The coalition isn't winning yet.
I know that's a gross oversimplification, but it does indicate that there might be other forces at work here.
There are plenty of groups for whom killing some "innocent" defector to score political points would be perfectly reasonable. The Taliban probably
remember the days when they were fighting against the USSR. Some of them may feel they still have a score to settle. If they were to kill some former
Soviet officer and discredit Putin (thereby reducing the likelihood of cooperation between East and West in the "fight against terrorism") they might
feel they had done very well out of it.
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MargaretThatcher
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| Quote: | Originally posted by unionised
True, the KGB have just been relabeled. But the rest of the world has changed. |
You have internalised the propaganda. The world hasn't changed - it's just the same.
The largest terrorist organisations are the CIA, KGB, Mossad, MI6 and DGSE, and it has always been this way. These organisations are responsible for
the majority of terrorist atrocities. It is likely that he was knocked off either by one of these groups or perhaps a gangster whose nose he had put
out of joint.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses. - Bertrand Russell
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unionised
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"True, the KGB have just been relabeled. But the rest of the world has changed.
You have internalised the propaganda. The world hasn't changed - it's just the same."
What, some bastard has rebuilt the Berlin wall and the cold war's back on?
I know the media is a bit of a disaster but I relly would have expected to hear about that.
Previously, the Western government used the USSR as the bogeyman to scare the people into submission.The USSR collapsed so now they use the terrorist
threat and the "axis of evil" to do the same thing (If not more in the name of "homeland security"). (BTW, can someone ask W who signs the armistice
when we win the war against terror, but not in this thread?).
On the other side of this, the folks who now find themselves vilified by the West (the USA in particular) feel that they need to fight back.
I grant that the same bunches of murderers (CIA KGB whoever) are still doing the same job, it's just that the relations between them got a bit more
complex.
" It is likely that he was knocked off either by one of these groups or perhaps a gangster whose nose he had put out of joint."
That's more or less the point I was making; just because it looks like the KGB (and I'm not sure it does) doesn't mean it was them. It could have been
any of a bunch of people trying to blame the KGB.
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Ozone
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Hello All,
Apologies, I was not clear that I was considering the biological elimination half-life as well (I was also speculating quite a bit, the news here is
*unreliable*. In fact, I thoroughly appreciate media confirmation from those here who live outside of the US.)
It is also known that smokers (such as myself, cough cough) have detectable Po in both urine and blood. Did he smoke? I Saw no mention in the news
here of the amounts detected in his urine. From this, it would be relatively simple (considering the timeline) to determine the approximate size of
the administered dose.
If considering the bio t1/2 and the decay t1/2, this places his time-of-death burden at approximately 62.5% of the original dose (I used 2ug for the
calcs.) not the 89.1% that would be suggested purely on the nuclear decay constant.
I have attached a spreadsheet for this, and have included a polt of the % of total dose on the relative timeline of Litvinenko's demise. From t=0
(dose) to 23 d (death), I use the 2 path exponential decay constant; from 23d (death) to 26d (now) I use only the nuclear decay constant.
Since Po is more-or-less considered "whole-body-dosage" (non-compartmental, viz. Ra, Pu and bones), this should be approximate.
Take care,
O3
Attachment: 210Po Worksheet.xls (224kB)
This file has been downloaded 690 times
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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JohnWW
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Thanks, Ozone. Po-210 gets into tobacco where it is grown in soils containing traces of uranium and its decay products such as Po-210 - these would be
clays and sedimentary rocks ultimately derived from the weathering of granite, which often contains rare-earth and uranium and thorium minerals. Many
plants, such as tobacco, selectively take up and concentrate heavy metals from soil, and selenium, tellurium, and polonium in particular. "Loco-weed"
in the southwestern U.S.A., in areas where soils contain Se and Te, is notorious for this, resulting in "selenium staggers" in cattle that eat it.
As for who killed Colonel Litvinenko, one has to look for motives, as well as who had the necessary access to the nuclear laboratory technology
required to synthesize Po-210 from Bi-209 using a Ra-Be neutron source, or to radiochemical laboratories which receive and use the stuff as a tracer
isotope for research purposes (e.g. in studying the metabolism of Te in plants). Unionized's possible alternatives simply do not "wash", and I am sure
that such a highly radioactive and carcinogenic substance (as well as being short-lived) would NOT be used in static eliminators or smoke detectors
currently sold to the public. Anyone else other than the KGB who wanted to "do the Colonel in" would have chosen a far less expensive and
sophisticated method than Po-210, or a tiny ball containing ricin fired from an umbrella, both of which are difficult to obtain, to kill him in an
hotel or restaurant, - for example, thallium or cyanide or curare or strychnine stolen from a university chemistry laboratory or a pesticides
manufacturer, or simply a high-caliber bullet fired from a concealed derringer-type gun fitted with a silencer.
[Edited on 27-11-2006 by JohnWW]
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pantone159
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| Quote: | Originally posted by JohnWW
I am sure that such a highly radioactive and carcinogenic substance (as well as being short-lived) would be used in static eliminators or smoke
detectors currently sold to the public. |
I'm not sure you wrote this right, I thought you really meant you didn't think Po-210 is used in consumer products. My reply assuming that...
Po-210 isn't used in smoke detectors, but I am completely sure that it is used in some anti-static brushes. I have one myself, I bought it online
from one of those gigantic NY photo stores, about 2 years ago. 'Consumer product' is stretching it a bit, this being kind of a specialist photo item.
It is very interesting to hold it up to a alpha detecting counter - at 10 cm the counter picks up nothing, at 1 cm the counter maxes out.
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not_important
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Reports are suggesting that aerosol delivery was used. This implies a larger dose, as does any adjustment for how well the body would absorb the form
the Po was in.
That still would be easy to bring into the UK, the aerosol container would shield the alpha radiation. They could start with 50x the needed amount so
as to have more than enough allowing for decay, inefficiency in delievery and absorbtion, and biological elimination. When you're done, toss the
container in the trash, or drop it down some pipe or shaft where it's likely to be undisturbed for a few years.
There's plenty of poisons, both natural and synthetic, that could be used for such a job. Some have the advantage that by the time the symptoms appear
enough damage has been done that the victim is highly likely to be saved. Note that there are a number of books with titles similar to "The Poisonous
Plant of ...", you need not even have to import anything.
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unionised
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http://www.amstat.com/solutions/staticmaster.html
Didn't take much finding.
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JohnWW
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| Quote: | Originally posted by pantone159
| Quote: | Originally posted by JohnWW
I am sure that such a highly radioactive and carcinogenic substance (as well as being short-lived) would be used in static eliminators or smoke
detectors currently sold to the public. |
I'm not sure you wrote this right, I thought you really meant you didn't think Po-210 is used in consumer products. My reply assuming that...
Po-210 isn't used in smoke detectors, but I am completely sure that it is used in some anti-static brushes. I have one myself, I bought it online
from one of those gigantic NY photo stores, about 2 years ago. 'Consumer product' is stretching it a bit, this being kind of a specialist photo item.
It is very interesting to hold it up to a alpha detecting counter - at 10 cm the counter picks up nothing, at 1 cm the counter maxes out.
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I made a mistake, since corrected - insert the word "not" between "would" and "b" in my previous post.
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MargaretThatcher
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Ozone, you may have seen this already. The dose coefficients have considerable uncertainty - certainly not the 3 sig. figs. shown here.
Attachment: 210PoPDF.pdf (81kB)
This file has been downloaded 935 times
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses. - Bertrand Russell
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Ozone
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Thanks for pointing that out M.T.!
That is true, I put that together rather quickly. Expect 2 sig figs (at *absolute* best). There are even slight deviations in fundamental data
including the energy of the main particle energy bin, viz. http://t2.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/decay?200,8437 . I'll have to dig out my old Rad. Health handbook (the pink one) to see what it says. I would round to
the nearest whole number and apply a "safety factor" if I were to bet the farm on this. Unfortunately, we are limited to wild speculation and
"back-of-the-napkin calculations".
4.5 mCi/ug (157 MBq/ug) at 5.4 MeV with a quality factor of 4 packs quite a punch! The standard "man" at 70 Kg will have ~2MBq/Kg (@5.4MeV, almost
quantitative)! If time permits, I'll put together a dose-table for this.
Note to self: Mind those significant figures!
Take care everyone,
O3
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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JohnWW
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The latest news on the Po-210 poisoning of Col. Litvinenko is that the London Metropolitan anti-terrorism cops, and the British Secret Police (MI5
& MI6), have detained for forensic testing four British Airways passenger jets that flew from Moscow to London in late October, after traces of
Po-210 were found on them, and they are also trying to trace thousands of passengers who were on them. In addition, traces of Po-210 have been found
in the Colonel's home, and two other London pubs that he visited the day that he fell ill.
Also, a former Russian Prime Minister, presumably opposed to Putin, fell ill while visiting Dublin, Ireland, on the day the Colonel died; he
collapsed bleeding from his mouth and nose, which could be either radiological or chemical poisoning, and doctors are sure that he was deliberately
poisoned.
BTW Has anyone here ever actually handled polonium isotopes?
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MargaretThatcher
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The Russian Prime Minister has discharged himself from the Dublin hospital and returned to Moscow. He had preexisting health problems including
diabetes (which can predispose towards nose bleeds).
They must know something about who was on those flights to ground the planes for forensics like that.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses. - Bertrand Russell
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Drunkguy
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Oh they do, and its only a metter of time before the nuclear bomb explodes
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pantone159
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I find it strange that, if a state intelligence service was really behind this (e.g. whatever the KGB is called these days), that there would be
traces of Po-210 left on the aircraft.
It seems an obvious thing to do, to transport the Po-210 in a sealed glass ampule, so none would leak out. I would expect that the KGB/etc would have
the resources to get that right.
But, whoever really did this, wasn't so careful. The radiation trails will provide a LOT of evidence about what happened, which will be a lesson that
radioactives aren't that great a poison, if you don't want to get caught.
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JohnWW
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Mario Scaramello, the Italian academic who met Litvinenko in a London sushi restaurant (Litvinenko's last meeting before suddenly falling ill later
that day, 1 November), after the latter had met two mysterious Russians in the Mayfair Hotel who claimed to have documents suggesting who recently
murdered a Russian journalist in Moscow (also critical of Putin), has just been also found to be contaminated with Po-210, although there is "no
immediate threat to his life". Traces of Po-210 have now been found in Litvinenko's home, in his wife's body, and in another London hotel, the
Millennium Hotel. The polonium compound that the Russians slipped into Litvinenko's drink in the Mayfair Hotel (after distracting him with documents)
must have been metabolized in his body into volatile compounds (e.g. hydrogen polonide or dimethylpolonium) which were exhaled in his breath, which
would explain how Scaramello became contaminated, and the traces of Po-210 found elsewhere.
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12AX7
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| Quote: | Originally posted by JohnWW
(e.g. hydrogen polonide or dimethylpolonium) |
Geez, I bet those smell bad. I mean, even worse than the usual ones...
Tim
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