UK Lab Traces Polonium To Russian Nuclear Plant 413
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.
Where is the reactor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A cold chill in relations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Build more atomic power stations and invest in reprocessing technologies and you won't have to worry about the Russians. You're still using MAGNOX reactors from the 60s since the NIMBY (not in my backyard) crowd has blocked building of new ones.
-b.
Bad for nuclear energy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a terrible event for nuclear energy. Directly connecting murder to radiation poisoning to only-in-nuclear-plants-production is devistating for public opinion. It won't matter that radiation generated by polonium can't even pentrate paper, let alone paper; that it is lethal (if ingested or inhaled) is what will stick in people's mind. Worse yet, news reports other people unrelated to the victims showing signs of minor levels; one analyst called it the 'equivalent of a dirty bomb' which is ludicrous but it'll still going to stick in the public's mind just as we really need to start developing new nuclear plants and technology.
Re:Where is the reactor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Russia could just come out and say they killed the guy, but with the power they pushed on the Ukraine on energy supplies, the Russians have much more leverage.
It doesn't much matter.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think any higher up (in organized government) would be dumb enough to order a hit this sloppy. The FSB, underfunded and undermanned as they are, is still very professional. They (the FSB) would have known that the radioactive elements would be traced. Personally, I'd bet this was done by some elements of government that are mafia (very common and they can afford to be sloppy since they are much harder to track). The dead guy had a long history of making enemies...
Gah! Not more on the Polonium! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Could Putin ever be so stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Could Putin ever be so stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, the Cold War "victory" was of the same type as the "victory" over Germany after WW 1. The Allies beat the Germans, but they left an impoverished, dispirited people who were educated and in possession of fairly advanced technology. The time was ripe for a charismatic leader to come in with promises of wealth and victory and rebuild their war machine. Same goes for Russia ca. 2006.
-b.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
As for who did it, nothing tells your critics what to go do with themselves quite like the long, painful and very public death of one of said critics. Sometimes a contract murder [wikipedia.org] just doesn't get the point across.
Re:Where is the reactor? (Score:5, Insightful)
We still don't know just how much of this polonium is around our normal lives to be worried about the scaremongering.
Good lord.
When was the last time you heard of an accidental death traced to ingested Polonium?
When was the last time you heard of any death caused by radioactive poisoning that couldn't be immediately traced to an industrial accident or something of that sort?
It's pure coincidence of course when Russian made Polonium kills a Russian dissident living in exile in Britain.
Re:A cold chill in relations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
How did they trace it out to some Russian reactor? (Score:3, Insightful)
I also have an opinion on that murder if it interrest anybody :
I have a conspiracy theory for you: foe of putin where seeing that putin position wasn't that bad right now, and they wanted a quick way to dredge dirt on him. So they procurated polonium then killed a resident in another country which was a vocal agaisnt Putin in a so SPECTACULAR way that it will be for a long time all over the media with all finger pointing at Putin. I do not see what Putin wins by making it so spectacular. True other vocal group might get afraid, but with it all over the media they might be emboldened to go forward and be more vocal, so that it will be even more difficult to elimnate them. No I think an old fashionned car "incident" and an old fashionned "push" in a train station at rush hour or an even more old fashionned slithing of throat would give as much a signal to the other vocal people without even being able to point finger at Russia. But polonium ??? Come on, they could have as well have tatooed "Putin killed me" on the forehead of the guy. This is why I think it is more convoluted and simply guys wanting to pee on putin did this to slime him all over. It looks like it was a total success from what I see in our media...
Re:More like... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More like... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not convinced that Putin did it. In fact, we're unlikely to know for certain *who* did it. Ever. The guy made a lot of enemies, and there are also a lot of people who'd be glad to sacrifice one ex-spy to make Putin look like a villain.
-b.
Re:Where is the reactor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, half of it. oops. Guess that point doesn't hold up in physics. Damned science. A small amount still would have been present for an indefinite period. Still, damned lucky someone grabbed a counter. I assume the hair falling out and the leukemia was a screaming pair of clues.
Re:Gah! Not more on the Polonium! (Score:5, Insightful)
He was a British citizen, or at least was granted asylum.
I know that Bush has played into the whole Gen-X apathy towards politics and history, but you have to understand that poisoning another country's citizen is called "an act of war". Really.
Re:It doesn't much matter.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If this was the first one of Putin's critics to meet a unfortunate end, you might have a point. In fact the first 'official' response (from state controlled media) suggested that he may have committed suicide. Sorta like the proverbial mod boss claim that his dead colleague in the room simply 'fell' on his knife 27 times. To me it looks like it now the Russian voters time to clean house, that is of course if Putin doesn't stop them.
Re:UK lab declines to name specific nuclear plant. (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, Litvinenko, Politkovskaya (and his friend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Berezovsky [wikipedia.org]) are not real threats to Putin. They are considered 'political corpses' since about 2002. Most people under no circumstances will support either of them.
But these guys are token 'democracy fighters' for most Westerns who do not know intricacies of Russian politics. Now ask yourself: why would Putin kill them?
So it's much more complex than you think.
Re:My theory of what's going on here (Score:3, Insightful)
The murder makes headlines the world over before the guy even actually dies, and you call this "elegant?" Elegant compared to what, the average GTA game? More elegant than dropping a piano on his head? WTF?
You don't get away with murder either with such an exoctic and obvious poison, nor nor by murdering others around him in exactly the same, easily-identifiable way, giving investigators yet more evidence to work with. Elegant would have been some chemical substance that has all the earmarks of heart disease or some other common killer.
My God, if this is what passes for "elegant" in the field of murder these days, no wonder prisons are overflowing with captured criminals.
"It's beautiful. Nobody other than state-sponsored assassins would have the resources"
EXACTLY! Narrows that list of suspects right down, doesn't it? If it weren't for the fact that nuclear security in Russia is a joke, if the Russian government actually did this, they'd have a better chance of deflecting blame and avoiding suspicion if they just sent a MiG over his house to drop a bomb down his chimney!
If this is a state-sponsored political assassination, this is the worst one evar. Tin-plated generalissimos in banana republics do a better job of disappearing enemies. It is far, far more likely that this was done by somebody with the mentality of a 12 year old in an effort to blame the Russian government for this. Heck, I'd believe that this was done by those who believe themselves to be friends of the Russian government, because then the rationale of the motive would be as stupid as the actual murder.
Re:More like... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not convinced that Putin did it. In fact, we're unlikely to know for certain *who* did it. Ever. The guy made a lot of enemies, and there are also a lot of people who'd be glad to sacrifice one ex-spy to make Putin look like a villain.
-b.
Hell, the state-corrupted media has even gone as far as suggesting that the former spy killed himself, perhaps with the polonium 210 pack all spies carry.
The fact is that killing dissidents is old Soviet SOP, the fact that it is making a come back with an old KGB guy at the helm is no real surprise. In my mind the only real question is 'does Putin know or is it being done without his knowledge by those who benefit from his coattails?'. Frankly, I suspect the latter, but only because I don't really want to piss him off, because every one knows what happens to his critics.
What were they thinking, anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're a major nation, and you can't pull off a simple hit? I mean, it's pure evil, but if somebody gave me the job I don't think it would take me too long to find a mobster, tap into his network, and get a decent hit-man who could pull off a plausible "robbery" where the guy got shot, or a car "accident" or even the good old standby like a bomb wired into the ignition. But NooooOOO. They had to go scattering radioactivity that would produce collataral damage, potentially ruining international relationships, and best of all... leaving a trail of radioactive breadcrumbs leading right back to the source!
What are they going to do to the guy who came up with that idea? Send him to China and then explode a dirty bomb in his apartment in downtown Beijing?
Re:More like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Which, for the record, isn't exactly a happy thought.
It's like still being friendly with President Musharraf after Pakistan has been implicated in spreading nuclear technology all over the place; we don't hold him responsible for the actions of the rogue intelligence agencies that control his counry's nuclear technology.
Still, I don't think this was done around Putin's back. He's a serious hardball player, not some two bit general riding an out of control tiger.
Re:More like... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some who say that Bush (or the Jews) plotted 9/11, but there are also some who still believe OJ is innocent, that aliens do anal probes, and that a Nigerian will make them rich. P. T. Barnum never did say "There's a Sucker Born Every Minute", but whoever did gave a fair estimation of the availability of gullible people.
Because FEAR is effective and Russia is dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)
Russia is dangerous. It is nationalistic, it is autocratic, it feels humiliated and condescended upon by the West, it is paranoid, it is jealous, and its economy is fragile and only propped up by the current run-up in oil and gas prices. It only needs a ruthless populist (read 'demagogue') to push it over the edge to full-on fascism. It already has pretext for expansion based up the plight of ethnic russian minorities in its former empire.
Just a dangerous is that for a nationalist Russia, this would be a rational and likely succesful course of action. Russia need but bluster and Europe will cower, while the US is busy elsewhere. Russia would be able to get away with suppressing internal dissent and perhaps annexing some of their neighbors, and they know it. Europe is not psychologically prepared to fight WW3 over the Baltic nations, or Ukraine, or Trans-Dneister and the Russians know this. They need not fear any UN action because they possess a veto in the Security Council (not that the UN is to be feared by anyone anyway, its last meaningful military action was Korea in the 1950s).
Re:More like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More like... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because that is all they have; It's not like Washington is going to stand up for the truth, or for that matter Europe. Hell, we are having enough trouble with Iraq as it is, the last thing we need is them to start supplying them with more Russian anti-tank weapons at a reduced cost and the Europeans are more concerned with heating their homes than a new Russian Plutocracy. Like it or not when people who speak up die, others have a tenancy to keep their mouths shut. Frankly, I gave a pausing thought of continuing this thread, and this is even my 'don't talk about myself account' on this site.
I would be more open to your (and the Russian state media) accusations of 'wag the dog' assignations, if there was some real historical precedent of media coverage of political killings fully bringing down a corrupt government and placing an opposing leadership in power, but there is none. There is no comparative example of it, and there is no solid opposing leadership to exploit it.
Everything in this story points to a 30 or 40 year old KGB plot, executed by people who were concern that another shooting would be too 'messy'. Thanks in part to 9/11 and planning for 'dirty bomb' officials and medical staff were prepared to spot and trace nuclear attacks. Add to that our new found access to samples from Russian nuclear plants and old KGB assumptions would be moot. I don't know if Putin was directly involved, but every sign says that it was (at least) done on his behalf.