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Europe
$1 Million Hit? The Real Deal on Polonium
2006-12-01
Posted by:anonymous5089

#2  MOSCOW (Reuters) -
Polonium 210, a highly toxic radioactive substance found in the body of an ex-KGB spy who died in London last week, cannot be obtained illegally in Russia, its nuclear energy chief was quoted as saying on Friday....The head of Russia's state atomic energy agency Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, told the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Russia produces only 8 grams of Polonium 210 a month.
"All this amount goes to U.S. companies through a single authorized supplier, Tekhsnabexport company," the newspaper quoted Kiriyenko as saying

Only enough to kill a few thousand people. If it's that tightly controlled and hard to make, a government almost certainly had to be involved.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2006-12-01 11:08  

#1  More of a "distortion by omission" than the real deal.

"Levi says that while it isn't easy to obtain a deadly amount of polonium online, it also isn't prohibitively difficult." Getting a sufficient quantity online still looks nearly impossible. Getting a deadly amount of Polonium into a form that could be surreptitiously given to a potential victim, without access to a very sophisticated nuclear lab, also very unlikely.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2006-12-01 09:49  

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