Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Polonium-210 Available Through Mail Order

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wed Nov 29, 2006 02:11 PM
from the healthy-breakfast-shakes dept.
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."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] UK Lab Traces Polonium To Russian Nuclear Plant 413 comments
reporter writes "British authorities had identified polonium 210 to be the radioactive poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who defected to Great Britain. Now, according to a disturbing report, the authorities have identified the source of the poison to be Russia. Bloomberg ominously reports, 'Scientists at the U.K.'s Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, west of London, have traced the polonium 210 found in London to a nuclear power plant in Russia, the capital's Evening Standard newspaper reported today. Officials at the establishment didn't return calls.' A cold chill just fell on relations between Russia and the West." In another twist to this developing story, the shadowy Italian security consultant who dined with Litvinenko has also fallen ill with radiation poisoning.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.
  • by grub (11606) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:12PM (#17036716) Homepage Journal


    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!!!

  • When a lump of coal just won't do...

      • by cluke (30394) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @03:20PM (#17037910)
        Surely not someone advocating "Security through Obscurity" on Slashdot of all places?
      • by b0s0z0ku (752509) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @03:22PM (#17037946)
        Which is why the phrase "loose lips sink ships" was coined. There have been numerous headline-grabbing items like this article on Slashdot and in the media in general which serve no purpose to anyone unless you're making money from the article or you're a terrorist looking for ideas.

        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.

  • Not anymore (Score:5, Funny)

    by jbeaupre (752124) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:13PM (#17036744)
    I stopped in a few weeks back to buy some and some Russian dude in line ahead of me bought the last of it.
  • Feh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gowen (141411) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:14PM (#17036764) Homepage Journal
    The Polonium available on United Nuclear's site can be purchased without a license because the level of radioactivity, 0.1 microcurie, doesn't pose a danger, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says.


    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:Feh (Score:5, Funny)

      by spellraiser (764337) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:35PM (#17037114) Journal

      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.

    • by pepax (748182) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:43PM (#17037274)
    • Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Speare (84249) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:51PM (#17037424) Homepage

      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.

  • xmas gift (Score:5, Funny)

    by truthsearch (249536) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:15PM (#17036794) Homepage Journal
    I think Bolonium is a much more appropriate holiday gift. After all, its atomic weight is deliciously snacktacular.
  • Moo (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chacham (981) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:19PM (#17036848) Homepage Journal
    Who cares about Uranium, when we can have supermagnets!

    Read the page, see the bait:
    Two of these magnets close together can create an almost unbelievable magnetic field that can be very dangerous. Of all the unique items we offer for sale, we consider these items the most dangerous of all. Our normal packing & shipping personnel refuse to package these magnets - our engineers have to do it. This is no joke and we cannot stress it strongly enough - that you must be extremely careful - and know what you're doing with these magnets.

    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)

      by 3770 (560838) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:34PM (#17037094) Homepage
      I did buy magnets from there. They are freakin' awesome.

      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)

      by Dachannien (617929) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:36PM (#17037140)
      Among the most dangerous things you can give your small child are magnets - particularly the small pea-sized sort that are used in toys that are moved around on a platform by other magnets placed underneath.

      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.
      • Magnetic hazards (Score:5, Informative)

        by Animats (122034) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @03:14PM (#17037828) Homepage

        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.

  • by Lane.exe (672783) * on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:22PM (#17036900) Homepage
    Will work on moose and squirrel, yes?
  • Polonium and Smoking (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Venner (59051) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:25PM (#17036952)
    I found it a bit amusing when they stated that Polonium was hard to obtain. It is actually drawn from the soil into Tobacco plants and is one of the Really Bad Things implicated in smoking and cancer (along with
    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!
    • by selex (551564) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:36PM (#17037156)
      Oh come on, why don't you people stomp my only joy in life some more. It causes cancer, it smells, it yellows your teeth, it stunts your growth, it makes you sterile, it slaughters small puppies with a chainsaw...and now its radioactive. Son of a bitch! I'm about to start smoking crack...seems less harmful.

      Selex

      Does the United Nuclear's webpage sell that too?
  • Ripoff (Score:5, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron (339739) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:37PM (#17037168)
    Don't buy this stuff... it's some kind of scam. I ordered a bunch, and I set it aside until I got around to needing it. About one year later when I wanted to use it, more than 80% of it had mysteriously disappeared into thin air! Talk about planned obsolescence... and this stuff ain't cheap. This is worse than inkjet cartridges.

    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.

    • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)

      by b0s0z0ku (752509) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:32PM (#17037084)
      The toxic dose is 0.03 micro-curies

      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.

    • by Jerf (17166) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:36PM (#17037134) Journal
      Because there is nothing special about radiation.

      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!.)
    • by Vellmont (569020) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:45PM (#17037324)

      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?
      • by MustardMan (52102) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @02:57PM (#17037528)
        And unlike e.g. guns, polonium 210 has other uses than to kill people.

        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.
    • by paeanblack (191171) on Wednesday November 29 2006, @03:21PM (#17037936)
      Often times these heavy elements have worse biological properties from their chemical interactions than from the radiation they emit. It might well be that it will be chemically toxic to you long before radiation becomes a worry.

      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.