Poisoning Of Ex-Agent Sets Off Alarm Bells
Nuclear Regulators Fear Wider Attempt
By Peter Finn
Washington Post
MOSCOW -- Ninety-seven percent of the legal production of one of the world's rarest industrial products -- the intensely radioactive isotope polonium-210 -- takes place at a closely guarded nuclear reactor near the Volga River 450 miles southeast of Moscow.
In an average year, about three ounces of the substance is made at the Avangard facility, a former nuclear weapons plant, then sold under strict controls to Russian and foreign companies that prize it for its abilities to reduce static electricity.
This fall, a microscopic quantity of polonium-210, from somewhere, found its way into the body of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian internal security agent living in London. He died an agonizing death in a hospital 22 days later.
Now an international investigation is trying to track that dose back to its source. Detectives from Scotland Yard have said nothing about where the trail of evidence may be leading; Russian officials have been more willing to talk, saying that Avangard is tightly audited and that illicit production of polonium-210 is technically possible at many of the world's reactors.
Still, Russia's near total domination of the world's legal trade in the substance has focused new international attention on the country's production system and controls. In addition, Litvinenko's death has created new concern among regulators that the substance might be used as an instrument of murder by terrorists.
Russia is the main source of polonium in part because it offers high quality and the best price for commercial users, according to Nick Priest, professor of radiation toxicology at Middlesex University and a former head of biomedical research at the Atomic Energy Authority in Britain. No polonium is produced in Britain, and officials in Russia said none has been exported commercially to Britain for at least five years.
Polonium-210 is produced in reactors by irradiating bismuth-209, an isotope of the element bismuth. The resulting substance is so radioactive that it has a half-life of only 138 days, meaning that half the atoms in a given quantity will disintegrate in that period.
(The rest is here.)
By Peter Finn
Washington Post
MOSCOW -- Ninety-seven percent of the legal production of one of the world's rarest industrial products -- the intensely radioactive isotope polonium-210 -- takes place at a closely guarded nuclear reactor near the Volga River 450 miles southeast of Moscow.
In an average year, about three ounces of the substance is made at the Avangard facility, a former nuclear weapons plant, then sold under strict controls to Russian and foreign companies that prize it for its abilities to reduce static electricity.
This fall, a microscopic quantity of polonium-210, from somewhere, found its way into the body of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian internal security agent living in London. He died an agonizing death in a hospital 22 days later.
Now an international investigation is trying to track that dose back to its source. Detectives from Scotland Yard have said nothing about where the trail of evidence may be leading; Russian officials have been more willing to talk, saying that Avangard is tightly audited and that illicit production of polonium-210 is technically possible at many of the world's reactors.
Still, Russia's near total domination of the world's legal trade in the substance has focused new international attention on the country's production system and controls. In addition, Litvinenko's death has created new concern among regulators that the substance might be used as an instrument of murder by terrorists.
Russia is the main source of polonium in part because it offers high quality and the best price for commercial users, according to Nick Priest, professor of radiation toxicology at Middlesex University and a former head of biomedical research at the Atomic Energy Authority in Britain. No polonium is produced in Britain, and officials in Russia said none has been exported commercially to Britain for at least five years.
Polonium-210 is produced in reactors by irradiating bismuth-209, an isotope of the element bismuth. The resulting substance is so radioactive that it has a half-life of only 138 days, meaning that half the atoms in a given quantity will disintegrate in that period.
(The rest is here.)
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