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Polonium, no license required, as far as I can tell this site is real. Only $69, just click on "Add to Cart."
Here are the legitimate uses of polonium. Here is a less than legitimate use.
Thanks to Natasha for the pointer; she pursued some leads from Russian web sites.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 26, 2006 at 07:16 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2469178,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2469142,00.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6180068.stm
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13553419,00.html
Posted by: S at Nov 26, 2006 9:47:58 AM
You can buy tritium (useful as a trigger for a fusion bomb) legally too. But the important point is the volume you're allowed to buy without triggering a follow up (or a request for a licence). I've no idea how much Po 210 is in each piece at that link but I'd be amazed if it were even a gramme.
When you start getting to the useful levels of a material then the rules do become a great deal more restrictive. We waited 6 months to get a licence to ship zirconium powder once (it's a dual use item, both car airbags and initiators for cluster bombs).
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Nov 26, 2006 9:54:39 AM
According to Wikipedia, a lethal dose of Po210 is about 525 microcuries. $69 at United Nuclear gets you .1 microcuries - meaning you'd need more than 5000 of these in your cart to make a single lethal dose.
The Wikipedia article points out that a particle of 6.8 * 10^-12 grams would produce about .03 microcuries - so this .1-uCi particle will weigh about 2.25 * 10^-11 grams, or about 20 trillionths of a gram. A good way to visualize it would be to imagine taking a single strand of your hair, and cutting the largest possible sphere out of it that you can. That sphere would weigh about the same as this sample of Po210.
Posted by: Aric at Nov 26, 2006 10:13:19 AM
I find it odd that the KGB would resort to polonium poisoning, it simply leaves too large a trail. It would be infinitely easier to simply have this guy beaten unconcious and then thrown in the Thames.
Posted by: Adrasteia at Nov 26, 2006 10:49:42 AM
Ah, but it's great for the terrorism aspect. What could be scarier than sipping a lethal dose of radioactivity in your tea, all unsuspecting?
Posted by: Sarah at Nov 26, 2006 11:15:53 AM
Taylor, that's one-tenth of a microCurie: 2.26×10^-12 grams.
Two trillionths of a gram. See this Wikipedia article.
Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at Nov 26, 2006 1:24:53 PM
More here. The lethal dose would be about $500,000.
http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2006/11/a_physics_murder.php
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Nov 26, 2006 1:36:22 PM
I wonder how much he actually got. The calculations people are doing are based on the minimum lethal dose estimates from Wikipedia. He could have been given quite a bit more... If I was a poisoner, I would include a margin over the minimum lethal dose.
In the link, I wonder how much was detected at the sushi bar and the hotel etc.
http://dimer.tamu.edu/simplog/archive.php?blogid=3&pid=4397
Posted by: Jim Hu at Nov 26, 2006 5:05:35 PM
So - does that mean the assassination cost somebody half a million? If so, it seems the kind of vast sum that only a state would be likely to pay. Ergo - this was in fact a political murder committed by the Russian government. Not that there was any doubt, but this adds to the evidence.
Unless the polonium at the website is vastly "overpriced" in some sense.
Posted by: Constant at Nov 26, 2006 5:17:45 PM
Actually the most significant cost would be the risk of death to the poisoner. Both Wikipedia and the New York Times imply a real risk of the poisoner accidentally inhaling a fatal dose while sprinkling it on Litvenenko's food.
Posted by: DK at Nov 26, 2006 6:24:49 PM
By the way: with a half-life of 138 days, that Polonium stuff loses value pretty quickly.
Posted by: J. Lilly at Nov 26, 2006 7:47:45 PM
Polonium on the website is overpriced, probably due to being sold in small amounts. According to Wikipedia, the world production of polonium is about 100g, which would cost 5 trillion dollars at this price.
Posted by: Adrian at Nov 26, 2006 8:07:12 PM
I think it wouldn't be transported in solid form. It's volatile as a solid. However, it's soluble in weak acids, based on the same Wikipedia article.
The website linked just made the CBS evening news!
Posted by: Jim Hu at Nov 26, 2006 9:16:30 PM
Few points, the amount of polonium unitednuclear sells is very very
insignificant compared to what killed AL. The amount that killed him was
produced in a nuclear lab attached to a nuclear power plant.
Second, the damage Litvinenko was causing to the russian leadership was
worth the price(to the russians) of posioning him. The relevation of the person who killed
Anna Politkovskaya and documents about Yukos passed to the former vp of yukos made the fsb very nervous.
Posted by: SM at Nov 27, 2006 6:52:11 AM
Re pricing at United Nuclear (sorry to join this thread so many times but my day job is dealing with weird and exotic metals) a very large part of the price is that they have a catalogue, run a website, overheads and all. This is very common (there are other companies, like Alfa Aesar) that a gramme, of a micro gramme of something costs a lot.
In my own field, scandium, a gramme can cost $80 for the metal. A kilo can be had for $2,000 or so. A tonne is valueless as simply no one has a use for that much of it.
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Nov 27, 2006 8:26:33 AM
You can purchase 500 microcuries of polonium-210 for $71 dollars (US) at
http://www.sterlitech.com/products/membranes/staticeliminator.htm
A few other data points.
1. According to The National Counicl on Radiation Protection and Measurements Report 65, a lethal dose ix 36 microcuries/kg in rats with a median survival time of 22 days. That is without any supportive medical care. Thus a minimum lethal dose would need to be around 3 millicuries assuming virtually 100% uptake from the gut.
2. A fecal analysis would be much more definitive than any urine anaylysis. I wonder how the British performed their analysis, alpha spec. after wet chemistry and filtering or ICP-MS.
3. According to the Nuclear Regualtory Commission NUREG/4884 a urine sample take 10-20 days about a single uptake would contain about 1/10,000 of the initial intake.
3. The average cigarette was 0.5 picocuries. Thus a smoker who is smoking two packs (40 cigarettes) would have an intake of about 20 picocuries.
Posted by: superdestroyer at Nov 27, 2006 8:43:30 AM
To demonstrate that I do not have a life, I would a 31 millicurie source, about 10 times the minimum lethal amount for $229 (US) at http://www.ricelake.com/docs/viewProduct.php?productID=91906
The problem would be getting the polonium-21- off of the device and into solution.
Posted by: superdestroye at Nov 27, 2006 9:07:38 AM
