Former Spy Poisoned By Radiation In UK

An anonymous reader writes "BBC new is reporting the death of the ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko with a major dose of radioactive polonium-210. But nobody knows how it got there. Suspicions have fallen upon the Russian security services (who deny involvement). The task of the pathologists now is to unpick what really killed him and how it was administered. Quite what techniques they will use to solve this puzzle is unclear." From the article: "A post-mortem examination on Mr Litvinenko has not been held yet. The delay is believed to be over concerns about the health implications for those present at the examination. But Roger Cox from the HPA said a large quantity of alpha radiation emitted from polonium-210 had been detected in Mr Litvinenko's urine."

History repeating, sort of

[Phanatic1a]

Shades of Georgi Markov [wikipedia.org], a Soviet expatriate/dissident who was also assassinated in London. He was stabbed in the leg with a special spring-loaded umbrella that subcutaneously injected a metal pellet contaminated with ricin. They didn't even find the pellet until he was already dead, and it took some work to find out just what had killed him.

I wonder how they got the polonium into him. For a death this rapid, he'd pretty much have had to ingest it.

Worried, me?

[sane?]

Hands up who's not worried by this?

Lots of talk of what Al Qaeda might do, but these are the people with their hands on thousands of nukes, much of the energy supplies and they are now poisoning people with radioactive isotopes because they say they are scheming murdering psychopaths [cnn.com].

Do we really need another bunch of homicidal f*ckwits in the world?

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Anonymous Coward]

This was said before the postmortem and before Po poisoning was officially confirmed.

Before that the UK medics went through a list of at least 3-4 different hypothesis each of which proved to be loads of bull. Tallium, radioactive Tallium, strange objects in his intestines, etc you name it.

So at the point where Putin said it nothing was known yet. I have not heard what he said in Russian so it is also quite likely that some nuances have been lost in translation (like a "yet" at the end of the sentence).

As far as you noticing that his idea of violent death differs from our idea of violent death that is a definite. He would not have had his past job if this was not so.

It is quite interesting that AFAIK this is the first high profile poisoning with radioactive substance. Considering the guaranteed lethality and obvious ineptitude of the medics in diagnosing it I am surprised that this does not happen more often. Actually, probably it does, but using much smaller doses which end up in effects indistinguishable from cancer. If the dose was a small fraction of what he got he would have died quietly from leukemia 6 months from now. Whoever killed him wanted to make a point and also wanted the fingers to be pointed at the usual suspects.

Which makes me on a second thought post anonymously :-)

Polonium-210? What legitimate uses does it have?

[schwit1]

Other than in nuclear weapons?

Strange way of killing someone

[Jugalator]

I don't understand why of all things, they were using Polonium-210 to kill him. Since that's not exactly something you buy over the counter, wouldn't there be "better" ways of killing him by poisoning without drawing as much attention? Only about 100 grams of Polonium, any isotope, is estimated to be produced yearly and it's extremely rare in nature. It's hard to imagine a better way of drawing attention to the government.

Re:Apparently

[fafaforza]

Russia's actions are much more appalling because they are done in such openness, with such indifference to how easily it can be traced back to the state, underscoring their government's brazenness in doing whatever the heck they feel like doing. The list includes jailing an oil tycoon and using a fake company -- with shown ties to the government and billions of dollars that it gathered seemingly out of nowhere, to bid for the oil company, when sell it back to the state for pennies on the dollar. Or cutting off natural gas to entire countries in the midst of the coldest winter in years.

It is amazing to me how nothing has changed in Russia since the cold war, the KGB, Solidarity, etc. Russia is the big bully of Europe and there doesn't appear anyone that can stand up to them, and there's definitely too many business/trade ties for other governments to use any strong tactics to chastise Putin.

Re:Strange way of killing someone

[bigberk]

It's hard to imagine a better way of drawing attention to the government.

Maybe that's the point of it: a message to others thinking of disgracing the state, "who do you THINK could use this to poison him, of course it's us". Kind of a classy (in a twisted psycho way) to do a state execution before the world's eyes That being said, I take anything in the media with a grain of salt. The west (incl UK) isn't exactly friendly to Russia. They would probably rather make it sound like a Russian hit given a chance

Re:Polonium-210? What legitimate uses does it have

[RobertB-DC]

Surely I'm not the only one to immediately look up the element on the Wooden Periodic Table Table [theodoregray.com]?

Antistatic brush.
These brushes, which you can still buy today (2002) are made for brushing static charge off of photographic negatives. The radiation from the polonium element (which must be replaced every year or so because the half life is only 138 days) ionizes the air around the brush, making it conductive and carrying away the static charge.
[...]
Later, while I was in Boston to receive the Ig Nobel Prize for the wooden periodic table, I purchased a brand new brush with a full charge of polonium. That's why this sample is classified as having about 20% actual polonium: It's an average figure assuming I buy a new one every few years (they are fairly cheap).

Sounds like all our Russian "friends" needed to do was to visit the local camera store's going-out-of-business sale.

Re:If the FSB did it, I'm sure they felt justified

[b0s0z0ku]

even if Putin has ordered his execution it's not necessarily illegal

Not under Russian law maybe, but British law tends to frown upon murder on British soil. If whoever did it is caught, they'll be spending a long stretch in a small dark hotel room...

-b.

Re:Worried, me?

[Catbeller]

I've come to the conclusion that the American illuminati hated the Russians because they were too alike, too close in methodology and goals, to the Americans. Now that all the ideology is stripped away, there really isn't much difference between the Bushes+the CIA and Putin+the KGB. Except that the Russians are so much better at the nasty stuff, as they aren't hampered by thinking of themselves as morally superior.

The ex-KGB boys used a poison that is produced at the rate of 10 grams per year worldwide. They didn't do it to be clever. They did it to send a message that they did it, there's nothing that can stop them, and when you fuck with Putin and the New Russian Order and you get a creative agonizing death.

Putin was behind it. So again with the reporter a few months ago. Protest, die.

Now that we know that our "ally" is putting the finishing trim on his capitalist dictatorship, how will our millionaire media airheads and our millionaire government respond? Do I hear crickets?

Yes, exactly, that is the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes it bloody clear that someone with some real power (how else to get the stuff) wanted this person death AND succeeded. It sends a message. Cross us and you die and we don't give a shit who knows. You can kill someone to send the victim a message OR to everyone else who is aware of the killing.

Offcourse it might just as well be a setup. Someone who wants to make it look like it was Putin.

Frankly I don't know enough about the guy to make a guess wich one is the case but the use of an obvious method of execution is not that hard to explain. Because if it was Putin then so what. Will britain go to war over this? Even a mere trade war? Most likely not. If it was Putin this was a show of power. Basically saying,"we are still here and don't you forget it."

Offcourse the other option, that this is a setup to frame Putin is less likely but far more intresting. Russia is screwed up enough that Putin has lots of enemies in Russia itself and with its security system all messed up someone getting hold of a rare material is not that unimaginable.

So the question is, why would Putin want this guy dead so badly (more acuratly why would Putin want the world to know that he wanted this guy dead and succeeded) OR who wants to make it look like Putin killed this guy.

Ah, were is 007 when you need him?

Polonium 210?

[Enrique1218]

I could have thought of 200 better ways to off someone discretely just by watching the Sopranos or The Wire. With all the poisons in the world, they pick an exotic and rare poison yet whose symptoms are ubiquitous and unique. What is the cover story? He moonlights as a nuclear technician? I think the spies have watch too many James Bond films. It would have been better to have taken him to an abandon house, clipped him, and then pour lye over him to removed the evidence. Or here is a better thought, stop doing bad things. Russia should try to be more civil and stop offing dissidents and take a more American approach- brand them unpatriotic.

Re:Reading the artcle......

[b0s0z0ku]

Not sure about totalitarian, more like a crimistocracy or crimocracy or perhaps crimotarian.

Same thing. Only difference is that in a totalitarian state the criminals generally operate under color of law.

-b.

Re:History repeating, sort of

[deglr6328]

Polonium is horribly toxic BECAUSE of its unbelieveably high radioactivity rate. It is a radiotoxicity not a chemical toxicity. I'm sure Po also posesses chemical (heavy metal) toxicity properties as well but you would be stone dead from the radiotoxicity alone of a tiny dose LONG before any heavy metal toxicity was an issue. I don't think people are appreciating just how radiotoxic it actually is, for instance a mere tenth of a milligram [slashdot.org] of Po-210 would give you a dose hundreds of times greater than Louis Slotin had.

Re:Same old Russia

[tobe]

Barbarians compared to the US of course who indulge in no such activites..

Like rigging elections, assasinating democractically elected heads of state they don't agree with, invading countries for suggesting they might prefer to sell oil in Euros thus causing a huge run on the already weak dollar, selling arms and torture equipment to countries with appalling human rights records, wire-tapping their own citizens on a scale undreamed of by the most autocratic of regimes, collaborating with despots for profit, operating an institutionally rascist judicial systm, atempting to deny women rights fundamentally accepted as basic by the entire western world, accepting graft as a proxy for politic.. yadda yadda yadda..

I'm not saying the rest of the western world's any better.. the brits, the french, the israelis.. they're all doing their bits to help out f ck it all up.. but really.. it's the sheer bare-faced hypocrisy of the US that disappoints the most.. still.. we seem to be growing up slowly..

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Moofie]

The word you're hunting for is "kleptocracy".

Answers to the question...

[TheOriginalRevdoc]

I've seen a few posts here asking "why use such an obvious method of killing someone?"

The answer is: it's very, very far from obvious. The mere fact that it's taken so long to work out what the poison was indicates how subtle Polonium poisoning is.

1. Based on the Wikipedia entry for Polonium, the dosage required is incredibly small. We're not talking milligrams, here; we're talking micrograms, or less. Just detecting such a tiny quantity distributed throughout the victim's body is going to be incredibly hard.

2. The poison won't produce discernable radiation outside the victim's body, either, because alpha radiation is so readily absorbed by tissue. (That's also what makes it such a good poison, of course.)

3. The thing with poisons is that you have to actually look for them. Polonium is such an unlikely poison - given its rarity and inherent handling hazards - that even considering it is far-fetched. The fact that the victim's urine contained helium was the only clue the pathologists had, and I think they deserve a huge amount of credit for getting from that result to polonium as the cause.

Re:History repeating, sort of

[debrain]

I guess animals just don't evolve receptors for substances not usually found in nature.

Artifical flavours [wikipedia.org] taste pretty strong to me. ;-)

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Marcos Eliziario]

Look for photos of person sick with acute radioative poisoning. You'll agree that's pretty violent.

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Master of Transhuman]

According to Justin Raimondo's analysis of the case, Litivenko is a raving lunatic whose accusations in general have been ridiculously unsubstantiated.

Therefore, the likelihood is that he was killed precisely to frame Putin for his murder, since he had no other value to anybody, apparently.

The assumption that Putin is behind it just because the individual was ex-KGB is a clear case of jumping to conclusions based on no evidence.

Im sorry but i have to say this :

[unity100]

Russia's current president is an ex kgb president. he is a thug, as well as the big-money who is now running the country are mobs, mafia and thugs, who are suppressing russian people and being harmful not only to russian citizens and to the world.

i see russia more dangerous than north korea while mafia placed presidents/governments, especially ones with kgb or such background at the helm.

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one other instance I can think of. In 1990 a disgruntled employee of the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick dumped heavy water from the primary heat transport loop of the reactor into the office water cooler. The water was of course heavily contaminated with radioactive tritium due to neutron bombardment of the deuterium in the heavy water and 8 people recieved significant radiation doses [ecology.at]. On person recieved about 20 REM (200 mSv)! Not nearly deadly but not nice at all.

No. Deuterium is an oddball nuclide and does not absorb neutrons. This is why it is used as a moderator in some nuclear reactors (heavy water is not as good at slowing down neutrons and normal water, but normal water has resonance absorption of neutrons which makes it overall a worse moderator). You make tritium out of neutron bombarding lithium (which you won't have in a reactor unless it is the brief byproduct of boron-10 neutron absorption and subsequent alpha decay).

Primary coolant will have chemicals in it to make it less corrosive and it will also have some radioactive material that has rubbed off of parts activated in a neutron flux (such as Co-60). The chemicals are likely to make someone sick, but the radioactive material is fairly low. It would be useful to note whether the 20 rem was a lifetime calculated dose or a acute dose. A 20 rem lifetime dose is not really that significant, but a 20 rem acute dose is about half as much needed to make someone get radiation sickness.

Re:History repeating, sort of

[kravlor]

When it comes to eating alpha sources, nothing should be considered safe, since the localized range (~cm) of the emitters, coupled with the strong energies of the alphas (~MeV) do terrible damage to the body.

Re:Worried, me?

[DrVomact]

Putin was behind it.

You know this for a fact? How?

Certainly, it's possible...but there's no proof. Moreover, I fail to see how Litvinenko's very public death would benefit Putin. The old KGB apparat splintered into many pieces after the demise of the USSR. Some of them work for the present Russian government, some are self-employed, and some work for...other organizations. It's possible that Litvinenko's poking around was getting close to someone in the "Russian Mafia" who had the means to pull this off, or the motive may be something as banal as a personal grudge held by an ex-subordinate. Litvinenko certainly flouted one of the basic rules for enjoying a long life: avoid making enemies whenever possible. He not only had many enemies—his enemies were dangerous.

It does seem likely to me that Litvinenko's death can be attributed to the ex-KGB, if for no other reason than that they are one of the few organizations that would have had quantities of exotic poisons stashed away. The problem is which faction or members of the ex-KGB might be responsible. Russian mafia? Rogue clique within the present Russian secret police org? An old boy (or a whole pissed-off department of the defunct KGB) pulling in some favors and activating connections to finally get even? Insufficient facts, I'm afraid.

You might want to pick up Litvinenko's book: Blowing up Russia : Terror from Within [amazon.com].

Re:Putin Pedophile Link

[Anonymous Coward]

A link to the hardly unbiased Chechen Press, and a harmless video on YouTube of (shock horror) "a politician kissing a small child in public" are not quite what I would consider hard evidence.

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Goaway]

can only be obtained from a limited number of state run laboratories

http://unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm [unitednuclear.com]

Re:Strange way of killing someone

[fearanddread]

Holy cow. That site is so ghetto I'd be afraid to give them my credit card number. Guess there isn't enough money in nuclear e-commerce to gussy the site up a bit.

United Nuclear

[Kadin2048]

I think someone might notice when you call up United Nuclear and try to order 1,000 of their 0.1 uCi Polonium sources. (And I'm not even sure if 1,000 of them would be enough to poison someone. That's a really minute amount they're selling.)

Re:rarity

[1.000.000]

And what can you or the rest of the world do about it? Nothing. And thats the point.

Dissappointing

[AaronLawrence]

After heading for a democracy, Russia is falling back into old ways. When I was there one woman earnestly asked me what I thought of Putin, and: "He is a strong leader isn't he"? Perhaps there is something in the Russian pysche that wants a strong leader more than a moral leader.

Their treatment of Georgia and other nearby states is not good lately, and this suggests that there are powerful and nasty organisations still calling shots there.

Please, Russians, don't go down the same road again!

Re:United Nuclear

[Goaway]

Well what do you expect for $69 on the internet? Point was, it most definitely can not "only be obtained from a limited number of state run laboratories".