Polonium-210 Available Through Mail Order 481
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."
Looking for some uranium. Click here (Score:2)
New level of cheating. (Score:5, Funny)
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... (Score:5, Funny)
When a lump of coal just won't do...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, I'm as anxious as you are to see Putin finally recognized for the evil, scheming sociopath that he is. (He has to be one, in order to come to power in a quasi-statist bramble of a society.) However...
...wouldn't this have been the perfect way for the FSS or whoever to engineer his downfall, in favor of a hardliner?
So let's practice what we
Re:A Lump of Polonium 210... (Score:5, Interesting)
For simple minds, it's KGB because an exotic poison like radioactive polonium seems kind of a signature it's no ordinary killing.
For smarty people, it couldn't be a KGB operation because KGB is not so stupid to poison people with exotic stuff when they have ways to make appear it an ordinary killing.
For chess playing soviet russia folks it could be a KGB operation because KGB could use the polonium as a too obvious link to make people think they're being framed while they're behind it all.
But, the odds are 50%. So I'd not point the finger at Putin so fast.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Rewmember that poisoning someone is a very personal act of violence. It could be that the KGB used the Polonium to make sure that Litvinenko knew who killed him.
In vendetta killings it is always sweeter if the victim knows just who is killing them. Anonomyous "Pwned" messages don't suffice. You have gotta leave your tag. What better way to do it than by using a 138 day halflife radioactive element that is obviously made ina nuclear reactor and would cost a milli
Re:A Lump of Polonium 210... (Score:4, Informative)
at a total cost of about $1 million - to have a toxic amount.
Re:A Lump of Polonium 210... (Score:5, Funny)
Mossad uses Zunes on arabs? And Poison, of all distasteful bands... They seem always to reach new lows.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I thought their usual poison has a high lead content and is introduced to the subject very quickly.
Re:A Lump of Polonium 210... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm [unitednuclear.com]
Re:A Lump of Polonium 210... (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks!
Nuclear Isotope - Alpha Isotope Type: Polonium-210 Qty. 15,000
Subtotal: $1,035,000.00 USD
Shipping & Handling: $19.95 USD
Re:Loose lips sink ships (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Loose lips sink ships (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that this will draw unwanted government attention to United Nuclear which is already under investigation. So that people with a legitimate need for alpha sources (and, yes, I consider the needs of amateur scientists legit) will find them harder to obtain. If you want to murder someone with poison, there are far easier ways to do it than with polonium-210.
-b.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not anymore (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not anymore (Score:4, Informative)
You should educate yourself before you speak again on this subject.
Ross
Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously though, you made an excellent point and I applaude you for it.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, at Republican Party meetings, all they do is smoke big cigars and laugh over how easy it is to dupe the proles. Afterwards, they go out and throw rocks at hobos.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
a great Wired article on United Nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
No doubt. The United Nuclear company is great, and this isn't the first time that fearmongering affects their very small and valuable business. That, and clueless frat boys who order the largest magnets they can find, just because it's fun to buy objects which have warnings with phrases like "serious injury will occur if you just carry this magnet through a room without planning your route carefully." Science is already being dumbed down by the nanny state; it's the reason that Mr. Wizard didn't endorse a modern update to his old chemistry sets. Timmy doesn't want to see what happens when boring baking soda mixes with boring tap water, but the school gets in trouble for anything more exotic and meaningful.
No you got it backword. (Score:3, Insightful)
Get your fear mongering right.
Remember if you outlaw child pornography, only criminals will have child pornography.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In order to be able to produce shippable samples you need to buy a larger quantity in bulk. If a family business in the midwest can do it, so can others. Anyway, the materials they offer are low activity, esoteric and not really scary. There used to be other places where you could get this kind of stuff in considerably larger quantities.
I have not done mol biol for a very long time, but the large biotech suppliers like Boehringer, Amersham, Pharmacia and their Russian competitors used to have considerably
Re:Feh (Score:4, Informative)
Each order is custom made to a LICENSED reactor, and shipped directly form the licensed reactor to the final customer.
You would need to order 15000 of there samples, and spend 1 Million dollars in order to get a toxic amount.
Then you would have to somehow manipulate the isotopes to put them in a form convenient for poisoning.
Order yours here (Score:2)
"Only Legal Source"
Give up another freedom! (Score:2)
Really getting disillusioned by the land that claims to be "Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave".
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever you do, don't take apart a smoke detector. Or a night scope. Or a glow in the dark keychain. Or a level gauge. Or an old pair of dentures. Or a wick from a gas camping lamp.
There are actually quite a few mail-order sites for nuclear materials. The stuff is expensive, but it is available. The only difference is that most sites request proof of licensing for such materials before they'll sell them to you. In that way they separate the valid research, medical, and
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, Name me one.
Name me one which doesn't cause any effects for several days after ingestion, so I have time to get out of the country and clear all my tracks. And after that, causes unusual symptoms so that doctors will be confused. And, after ingestion, though it causes no immediate symptoms, is 100% fatal no matter what medical support is provided. As well as being tast
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Mercury Poisoning [wikipedia.org]
A lot less sophisticated, but just as effective. And you can even administer it externally.
As for confusing the doctors, it's obvious that a radiological material failed to do that. In fact, most hospitals have rather extensive radiological areas and procedures. So the chances of the symptoms eventually bei
Re: (Score:2)
Won't detect Po210... (Score:5, Interesting)
What you need to detect an Alpha source is a scintillation detector.
xmas gift (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/polony [thefreedictionary.com]
Re:xmas gift (Score:5, Funny)
You said "snacktac-u-lar", it's "snackta-cle-ar", dummy.
not "easy" (Score:2)
You'd be surprised about shops like this. Feds will obviously track the payments and shipments of these things. Even medical devices which contain less damaging isotopes have strict tracking. Don't believe the friendly face isn't watching you.
Moo (Score:5, Funny)
Read the page, see the bait:
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 (Score:5, Informative)
I accidentally held them too close to each other with nothing in between and they slammed together with such a force that they made sparks and got chipped. I couldn't for the life of me get the magnets apart again until I realized that I could set one on the edge of a table and put my weight on the other to slide them apart but it still hurt my hands to do that.
The strength will amaze you and I only bought the 1" cube magnets. I can't even begin to imagine the strength of the really big ones.
Re:Moo (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Magnetic hazards (Score:5, Informative)
Modern magnets are so powerful there are real hazards. When magnets were iron or, at the high end, AlNiCo, they couldn't retain a strong enough field to make much trouble, so people thought of magnets as safe. Neodymium magnets, though, can be made strong enough to be dangerous. The Magnetix building set [wikipedia.org] killed several kids when magnets came loose from the plastic parts and were ingested. The CPSC had to order a recall.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as an aside, can you think of any object where this is not true?
Re: any object where this is not true? (Score:3, Insightful)
I might be missing something..... (Score:2)
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Eh, why not? It's not like you need polonium 210 to kill someone. A big stick can be used for the same purpose, and rat-poison can also be bought over the counter. And unlike e.g. guns, polonium 210 has other uses than to kill people. Most of those reasons advance science.
Apart from that, why should everything you don't have a need for, need to become "a controlled substance"? I don't know about you, but I have no wish to live in a society where everything is regulated, over-regulated, and then regulated again. I'm for gun control, because guns are a big problem in todays society. I'm not convinced that polonium 210 is a big problem in todays society.
Those things are addictive. Polonium 210 isn't.
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:4, Funny)
Eh, why not? It's not like you need polonium 210 to kill someone. A big stick can be used for the same purpose, and rat-poison can also be bought over the counter. And unlike e.g. guns, polonium 210 has other uses than to kill people. Most of those reasons advance science.
If you want my Polonium 210 you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
There, fixed it for you.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Which is why you should be against gun control. The problem is that not everyone has one.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm going to melt down all the small arms I own and donate the funds I receive from selling the scrap to the VPC.
Can you recommend any other inanimate objects over which I can get hysterical?
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ugh. The vast majority of guns in the US have never, nor will they ever, be used for killing people. Seeing as how we have so few natural predators left, hunting is an absolutely vital element of the wildlife conservation effort in many countries. Hunting provides healthy, lean meat, untreated by growth hormones and antibiotics, it controls populations, reducing disease and famine, it provides funding for programs that preserve wildlife habitats....
Guns can be used for a lot more than shooting people.
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhm, the vast majority of guns in the US have never, nor will they ever, be used for hunting. And a typical hand-gun is also completely useless for hunting. However, I have nothing against people who are gun-nuts either. If they want to spend their time down at the shooting range, firing at cardboard silhuettes of arabs, it's their choice. What I want to do, is to limit the number of people who choose to keep a loaded gun somewhere in their house, where it waits to be stolen, played with by their children, etc... just because they believe it will somehow "protect" them if 69 ninjas suddenly attack them.
And I didn't say anywhere that I was against guns. I said I was for gun control! Which is a completely different thing than being against guns in general.
Gun control would imply such things as
It's amazing that we have this for cars, but not for guns.
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm... how would I provoke such an attack by this particular type of ninja?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't have these rules for cars. You don't need a driver's license to own a car, or even, strictly speaking, to operate one (on private roads, with the owner's permission). You only need the license and registration to use the vehicle on public, State-owned roads. The equivalent for guns would be something like a concealed-carry license requirement (i.e. a license to carry the gun in public areas), which already exists in most places and typic
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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!.)
Re: (Score:2)
But it's so much fun when you hold a geiger counter up to them and yell, "OH MY GOD! YOU'RE EMITTING THOUSANDS OF BECQUERELS OF RADIATION!"
Then watch them go nuts for a few minutes before you finally explain to them that the postassium they need in their diet is a smidge radioactive. And God-forbid that our descendents might date our corpses with the Carbon-14 we're carrying around...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not to mention sleeping together with someone increases your dose from the Evil Potassium. (Still about 0.1 millirem per year extra :) By contrast normal background is about 50-100 mrem/yr, and smoking a pack a day gives you about 1000 mrem/yr.
-b.
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:5, Funny)
Here's what you're missing... (Score:5, Insightful)
But *WHY* is this stuff freely available?
It isn't. It's only available in very tiny quantities.
Shouldn't it be a controlled substance of some sort?
It is. Maybe you should read the article, or at least think a bit more critically that perhaps both Slashdot and Information Week are just trying to sell eyeballs here and are willing to overlook the fact that the amount available in incredibly tiny.
It almost seems that there are drugs and booze that have tighter restrictions.
Funny, I don't recall being able to buy arbitrary quantities of Polonium down the street from my local drug dealer (liquor stores included).
I'm curious. Are you always so reactionary to news stories, assume the worst, and don't bother thinking critically, or only when the word "nuclear" or "radiation" is in the article?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Note that "Maximum allowable body burden" is far from lethal. That is the amount where your employer has some explaining to do if you work at some place using pol
One question, comrade (Score:5, Funny)
Polonium and Smoking (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Selex
Does the United Nuclear's webpage sell that too?
Remember your Paracelsus: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Radon, as a heavier-than-air gas, obviously sinks. A person living in a basement apartment might have 1000% greater yearly environmental radiation exposure than someone living in a high-rise.
And I'm sure flight attendants who routinely work the long trans-Atlantic routes get hit with a lot from space. Etc.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
in soviet russia ... (Score:4, Funny)
antistatic brushes (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My own rough calculations suggested that a couple of antistatic brushes would be enough to kill someone if ingested:
500 uCi = (500e-6) * (3.7e10) = 1.85e7 decays/sec
Energy per particle is about 5 MeV
(5 MeV) * (1.85e7) = 9.25e7 MeV/s = 1.48e-5 J/s
Assume the material is evenly distributed in a person's body, mass 100 kg: 1.48e-7 (J/
Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium [wikipedia.org]
"The maximum allowable body burden for ingested polonium is only 1,100 becquerels (0.03 microcurie), which is equivalent to a particle weighing only 6.8 × 10-12 gram. Weight for weight, polonium is approximately 2.5 × 1011 (250 billion) times as toxic as hydrogen cyanide. The maximum permissible concentration for airborne soluble polonium compounds is about 7,500 Bq/m3 (2 × 10-11 Ci/cm3). The biological halflife of polonium in humans is 30 to 50 days.[18]"
The toxic dose is 0.03 micro-curies
http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm [unitednuclear.com]
Lists their polonium source as 0.1 micro-curie. Now Polonium is only REALLY toxic when inhaled, where alpha particles do the most damage.
I know they probably track source sales like mad, but yeah, that seems a bit too convenient. I don't know what the disks are made off. If they are, say, ceramic based, it's probably resistant to most methods of extraction. Anything else, well...
I don't know how much longer then that this will be a 'legal' alpha source.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
No it isn't. That's the standard set by OSHA which is several orders of magnitude below the toxic dose in order to prevent health effects in people working with the stuff.
-b.
Warning! This is illegal generic Polonium-210... (Score:2, Funny)
It does not meet the stringent FDA requirements that approved CIA spy poisons must and is therefore illegal to posses without a prescription from your local block captain.
Antifreeze... (Score:2)
Ripoff (Score:5, Funny)
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.
This is news? (Score:2)
Santa's Little Helper (Score:3, Funny)
At $69:0.1uCi, for a lethal dose of 0.03uCi, that's $66M to poison every Chicagoan. Before the volume rate discount.
I can split hairs with you all day long. It still doesn't get my toothpaste on a plane.
Chemistry sets used to have radioactive materials (Score:2)
hilarious Independent editorial by Mark Steel (Score:4, Informative)
Re:hilarious Independent editorial by Mark Steel (Score:4, Insightful)
After all history is ripe: the US state dep.t files describe Mussolini as a "Great Man" and Hitler as a "Great and Able Administrator".
This was in 1930s when Hitler enslaved Germany, and forced people into Labor at cheap cost,. Of coujrse companies like GE and others made a killing in Germany before the stupid Jap attack blew their plans.
Blair is not welcoming Putin: It is BIG business which is welcoming him.
i hope there is some caution (Score:2)
Buttercup (Score:2)
More scary then cyanide (Score:2, Informative)
Story is stupid (Score:2)
Doseage! (Score:2)
A lot of strange shit gets mailed (Score:2)
So far, I've yet to have the doctor "The lab doesn't understand what's happened. They couldn't run the test. They say it's almost as if the sample got electron-beam sterilized [epa.gov] somehow."
FUD: Pity the Amateur Scientist (Score:5, Interesting)
Not enough to poison someone, almost impossible to extract, etc. Poor United Nuclear will probably be run out of business just like everyone else who helps amateur scientists.
OT: why was Polinium210 used to poison Litvinenko? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I still do not understand is why anyone would want to use Polonium210 to kill somebody in the first place? There are dozens of substances available to everyone and probably thousands available to a secret service and all of these substances would be as efficient, cheaper, and less problematic for the one who applies them.
So why on earth use Polonium210?
My only explanation so far is that it is an extremely sadistic way to kill somebody: no antidote, it takes days and is extremely painful.
Re: (Score:2)
So no, he can't mail order enough to kill all of Chicago by embedding them in gift certificates.
Re:Brighter Teeth, For a Price (Score:4, Informative)
Umm, NO. 0.03uCi is not a lethal dose. Perhaps you are misreading that crap on wikipedia?
"maximum allowable body burden" is NOT the same thing as "Lethal dose".
The government regulates the maximum allowable yearly exposure of workers who handle radiation (I'm one), and the maximum allowable exposure is far far below the lethal dose.
0.03uCi is NOT a lethal dose of Polonium-210
Are we really discussing the operational details of poisoning 10-100% of Chicago?
I don't know what you are talking about, but I'm talking about how the poisoning of one spy is being overyhyped by people like you into 'terrorists can buy enough radioactive material from illegitimate companies on the internet to poison everyone in Chicago!'.
No. They can't. Simple enough.
Re: (Score:2)
UN sells in
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, 0.03 microcurie is _not_ the lethal dosis. 0.03 microcuries is the maximum that you are _allowed_ to swallow without the company you work at getting into trouble if it is found inside you.
Let's say you work at a company manufacturing rat p
Re:That amount isn't hazardous (Score:5, Informative)
In most cases it's a combination of the two...the chemical properties will ferry the isotope to a sensitive location where the radiation can wreak havoc.
For example, a weak alpha emitter can be held in the palm of your hand without any effects. An element that acts as a drop-in calcium replacement in the body can benignly sit in your bones. Combine both properties, and you'll have irradiated bone marrow and a world of hurt.
Re:wow, and run by a loon too (Score:5, Funny)