Posted on 11/24/2006 10:28:57 AM PST by melt
LONDON (Reuters) - Police investigating the death of a former Russian spy from suspected radiation poisoning have found levels of radiation in a London sushi bar where he ate just before he became sick, health officials said on Friday.
"The police reported that they had found some radiation there (in the Sushi bar). We are assessing the level of that and the potential risk to people that might cause," Pat Troop, head of the independent Health Protection Agency, told the BBC.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.scotsman.com ...
Th 210 decays quickly. In a single mass of a half gram, the heat cannot dissipate as fast as it is generated until it reaches that temperature.
Interstingly, some iron-type meteorites have enough uranium and thorium in them so that they remain a few degrees above room temperature.
The effect is used in Radioisotopic thermoelectric generators for space missions, like the 60 Watt Voyager "Batteries".(Still running fine after all these years.)
It is made by neutron capture by Bismuth 209--->Bi210 then undergoes a beta decay to Polonium 210. It has a Specific Activity of 4,500 Curies/Gram. (gulp). The Alpha particle has an energy of 5.3 MeV.
It could only be identified if there were "tramp" traces of other nuclides with it.
Tiny amounts were used in 'Staticmaster" brushes.
Sorry, I can't find the reference to that statement just now. However, we should take everything stated in the newspapers with a huge amount of salt. If you read the reports in the British newspapers, on the 19th when the story broke, Litvinenko was meeting with a female journalist in a Japanese bar. A couple of days later it was an Italian academic (male) in a Sushi bar.
Again, early on it was "definite" that Litvinenko was poisoned by thallium. A few days later it was suspected that it may have been radioactive thallium, whereas the day before yesterday thallium and radioactive substances were ruled out, according to some sources. And so it goes on and on....
BBC claimed that Police found some ingested objects in his stomach
I remember that too. The day after IIRC it was claimed that the shadows on the X-ray pictures were due to the ingested Prussian Blue, an iron-containing pigment given to Litvinenko to treat the thallium poisoning.
Vladimir's personal brand of Naga'sake'...
Thank-you!
Too bad Litvenenko couldn't read his tea leaves before he drank the tea... : )
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