Andrei Lugovoi accuses MI6 of Litvinenko poisoning

I would say you couldn't make this up, but clearly as the BBC and other media outlets show, Andrei Lugovoi can, and in fact has.

Apparently Alexander Litvinenko was a British spy and we fell out with him, and rather than have him run over in a car accident, or whatever, obtained polonium 210 from Russia (it is only comercialy produced there as I understand it) and poisoned him with it.

Please note that rumours that Andrei Lugovoi has been in consultation with Mohamed Al Fayed are totally unfounded, as Prince Philip was not mentioned in Andrei Lugovoi's allegations.

Pull the other one, its got bells on it!

The BBC has this.

Andrei Lugovoi to face charges over Alexander Litvinenko's murder with polonium

I wrote a lot at the time of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with polonium. It seems now that the investigation is complete and the files have been reviewed by the Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald has decided that Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB member should be charged.

He is currently in Russia so the chances of him being extradited are slim in the extreme but never mind.

The BBC has this.

For more on the poisoning, polonium and how interesting it is see here.

Panorama, Polonium and Alexander Litvinenko

Just watched Panorama on the polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

It was quite interesting and revealed a few facts I did not know.

For example it looks like a teacup contained the poison, Alexander Litvinenko may have wiped his mouth after drinking it, leaving his hand highly irradiated, as well as everything else he touched.

Also all the people who came into contact with the cup would have been irradiated and spread it about as well.

What I found most interesting was how much they think was used. 4 billion Bequerrels (Bq's). That is an astounding level of radiation. 4 billion decays per second.

But how much Polonium 210 is that?

Well, 27 millionths of a gram. So little you would not even notice it!

Of course Panorama seemed to find a trail back to the Kremlin, no surprise there. I would have though that it would take a very very daft bunch to try that though.

However it is very rare and hard to get hold of. Apparently quite a lot of it comes out of Russia.

You can read more of my articles on Polonium here.

Update 23 january 2007, 01:10

I forgot to mention that Alexander Litvinenko accused Romano Prodi, Italy's Prime minister of being a "KGB agent". Needless to say this has been denied. The Russians presumably would not wish to be associated with any Italian Government.

I understand Romano Prodi has also denied it.

You can read the ITV report here.

How Polonium 210 kills you

I have noticed a few people seeming to wonder over here from google to find out, so I thought I would explain.

Polonium 210 is one of 25 isotopes of polonium all of which are radioactive. It is also a rare earth heavy metal. It is toxic as are metals like lead and mercury however you are unlikely to have enough polonium in your system to be greatly affected by the toxicity before the radiation gets you.

There are 3 sorts of radiation, alpha, beta and gamma. Imagine if you will that you are trying to shoot a target on one side of London from the other. Gamma radiation is like a fine laser beam, beta radiation is like a snipers bullet and alpha radiation is like firing a double decker bus out of a very large cannon. It won't get very far but is bound to damage something on the way.

Polonium 210 decays to lead 206 by emitting an alpha particle. Aplha particles are in essence a helium nuclei. That's 2 protons and two neutrons. It is the heaviest radiation some 7500 (approximately) times heavier than a beta particle and carries twice the electric charge.

It won't go far but on the way it will rip 2 electrons from other atoms and this is where the problem lies. When you do that to an atom in a stable compound like haemoglobin in blood or DNA that atom stops being a full part of the compound. In short ionising radiation (which is what it is) rips small bits of the body apart.

That is not a problem in itself as this happens in small numbers all the time. Cells repair and move on. However what happens with radiation is that more cells are damaged than would otherwise be the case so it makes recovery harder.

Polonium 210 is very radioactive, 1 gram gives off 166 trillion (yes that is a very big number) of alpha particles a second. Even a milligram gives off 166 billion alpha particles a second and frankly the body can't cope with that level of sustained damage every second. Bits of your body just break down and cease to function.

You can read more articles from this blog on polonium here.

Polonium 210 Splash it on all over!

Any one remember the Brut 33 advert with Henry Cooper and Kevin Keegan? The tag line was splash in on all over. Well that seems to be what has happened with Polonium 210.

I have to say that I am a bit mystified by the news that traces Polonium 210 has been found on three British Airways aeroplanes as well as a couple of other sites in London. You can read the BBC's report here.

The reason I am mystified is that the stuff is rare and I presume expensive, yet it appears to have been transported around and left all over the place. You do have to wonder how much the killers started off with.

That said the trail seems to lead back to Moscow. I suspect that if you ran a Geiger counter over the airport you would pick up a trail that led right back to KGB headquarters. That I have to say would make me very suspicious as it would start looking like a fit up. Umm...

Polonium 210 A most peculiar poison

I was going to write an article deriding the idea that we should be worried about polonium 210, but having done some calculations I decided not to.

Polonium is a very odd thing to kill some one with. It is a bit poisonous but highly radioactive. People make the mistake of thinking that Uranium 235 is radioactive. It is a bit but not much. It is fissile which means that you can split its atoms with a slow moving neutron but is fairly harmless otherwise.

Polonium 210 on the other hand is highly radioactive. To give you an idea it radiates at 4,500 Curie per gram. A Curie is a unit or radioactivity. It is to radiation what the Fared is to capacitance and the Cubic Mile is to measuring milk. It is a phenomenally large measure of radioactivity.

Here are some other interesting facts.

The acceptable level of Polonium 210 in water is 0.2 Bq/L or 0.2 decays per second in 1 liter of water.

One Curie is 37 billion Becquerels.

Polonium 210 is rare. Very very rare. In fact estimated annual production is 100 grams. Not much. But then you don't need much to kill someone either.

A milligram ought to do it.

However it is a bit like killing someone with a hallmarked platinum bullet. Except that with the number of sites that this material turning up, its a bit like a machine gun burst of hallmarked platinum bullets. Bizarre. It also should not be that hard to track the source of the polonium either. So in effect the murder was signed. Who would do something like that?

I also found this article interesting.

Polonium and political controversy are no strangers

Polonium is a rare earth element. It does not grow on trees. It is in fact very very rare.

From the news reports I understand that traces Polonium 210 (an isotope of polonium) have been found in the now infamous case of Alexander Litvinenko.

You can read the BBC's article here. It will be covered by all papers in the morning.

There are of course some questions which arise. Is Polonium dangerous? Well I suspect it is a bit toxic, quite a lot of rare earth metals are. It is however as rare as rocking horse excrement, if not rarer. Hens teeth would be much easier to get hold of.

You can get it in a number of different ways, all of which involve nuclear power and the technical ability to separate polonium from what ever else it comes with.

Polonium 210 is an alpha emitter. That is to say that when it decays it sends out an alpha particle, which contains 2 protons and 2 neutrons.

There are two other sorts of radiation, beta, an electron, and gamma, a very high energy X Ray.

What makes alpha radiation so safe and deadly at the same time is this: Think of something being hit by an alpha particle as being hit by a 10 ton shell. It is going to do damage. What makes it so safe is that being so large and heavy alpha particles don't go very far. Typically only a few inches in air. In fact you could quite safely keep an alpha emitter on the top shelf and never get any radiation. Schools typically have alpha emitters but kept in lead.

Where it becomes very very dangerous is when it gets inside the body. There is nowhere for the alpha particle to go but some where it is bound to cause damage. It does this normally because it is basically a Helium atom without electrons. As it passes any atom it may steal an electron. This leaves an ion that was not there before, a free radical. These things can and do cause all sorts of problems including cancer. In order to do any of this damage though it does have to be inside of the body.

There will be huge amounts of speculation about who killed Alexander Litvinenko, but the biggest question in my mind is what prat would sign the murder in ten foot high letters of flame by using a chemical so rare that only 100 grams of it are produced a year?

Polonium is of course no stranger to political controversy. The Curries named it after Poland at a time when Poland was occupied in order to highlight its plight.

You can read the already updated to take account of this controversy article on Polonium on Wikipedia here.