Spy death link to nuclear thefts being investigated.

[deminks]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1957279,00.html

An investigation was under way last night into Russia's black market trade in radioactive materials amid concern that significant quantities of polonium 210, the substance that killed former spy Alexander Litvinenko, are being stolen from poorly protected Russian nuclear sites.

As British police drew up a list of witnesses for questioning over the death, experts warned that thefts from nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union were a major problem.

A senior source at the United Nations nuclear inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency, told The Observer he had no doubt that the killing of Litvinenko was an 'organised operation' which bore all the hallmarks of a foreign intelligence agency. The expert in radioactive materials said the ability to obtain polonium 210 and the knowledge needed to use it to kill Litvinenko meant that the attack could not have been carried out by a 'lone assassin'.

(snip)

One of the few figures available, on a database compiled by researchers at Stanford University in the US, revealed that about 40kg of weapons-usable uranium and plutonium were stolen from poorly protected nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union between 1991 and 2002. Although the IAEA has no confirmation of polonium finding its way into the underground trade, there have been several unconfirmed reports of thefts.

Also: Spy poison case detectives to fly to Moscow

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/26/npoison26.xml

Detectives will fly to Moscow and Rome this week in an attempt to unravel the mysterious radioactive poisoning in London of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector.

Senior security sources in Britain suspect that Russian agents — possibly a rogue unit — were behind the sophisticated nuclear weapons element used to commit the murder.

Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command wants to question two Russians and an Italian professor who lunched with Mr Litvinenko at the same Japanese restaurant in central London, just two weeks apart.

Last night the professor said he feared for his life.

Detectives have pinpointed Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, as the most likely place that the former KGB colonel was poisoned with polonium 210, a radioactive metal used to trigger nuclear weapons.

[bananas]

1. Whoever did it was sending a message.

There are much simpler ways of killing people.

[Warpy]

2. Simpler and harder to detect.

Polonium 210 is also a very expensive way to kill someone. Not only does it have to be created artificially by bombarding bismuth 209 with neutrons, its half life is only 5 days.

If it was sold on the black market, it'd have to have been transported and spiked into the sushi within a day or so.

It stinks more of Putin and an official assassination every day.

[bananas]

3. Yes, they knew it would be detected.

Kind of like the anthrax assassinations.