 One can buy any radioactive substance on the web site of American company United Nuclear Scientific Equipment & Supplies (UNSES). Along with all kinds of radioactive substances, one can buy polonium 210, which doctors reported to be the isotope that killed former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko.
Apart from polonium 210, e-shop UNSES offers to buy thallium, which had initially been suspected to have killed Litvinenko, Lenta.ru writes.
Polonium 210, activity 0.1uCi, half-life 138 days, energies 5304.5 KeV costs $69. At the same time, according to Boris Zhuikov, the head of radioisotope laboratory of Nuclear Research Institute of Russian Academy of Science, a lethal dose for humans is 1.2 uCi, that is, 10-20 thousand times more.
The e-shop heads say polonium 210 is Alpha-only radiation emitter (This is currently the only legal Alpha source available without a license). Moreover, one can order the so-called " Alpha, Beta & Gamma - 3 Disk Set", containing 1 each of the most popular sources: Alpha: Polonium210, Beta: Strontium90 & Gamma: Cobalt60.
As Newslab reported earlier, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who had exiled from Russia in 2000, was granted political asylum in London in 2001. It was announced that Litvinenko was poisoned Nov. 1. The spy died in a London hospital on Nov. 23 night.
Initially, it was suggested Litvinenko had been poisoned with thallium, however, the version was then ruled out, when polonium 210 was detected in his body.
UNSES has been engaged in sales of radioactive and toxic substances since 1988. The web site owners state their activity does not infringe any U. S. laws.
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