[ RadSafe ] Po-210: What is a unit?

[Cindy Bloom]

The United Nuclear's website supports Jim's conjecture.

http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm

Cindy

At 09:01 AM 12/19/2006 -0500, Jim Hardeman wrote:
>Ivor --
>
>Just guessing, but I would think that "unit" in this context means the 
>amount of material present in one of the sources that United Nuclear 
>offers for sale for $69 ... sort of like counting how many smoke detectors 
>you would need to make an RDD. If I remember correctly, the United Nuclear 
>sources are distributed in the US as exempt items ... meaning that each 
>one (from memory) would contain ~0.1 microcurie or less of Po-210.
>
>Jim Hardeman
>Jim_Hardeman at dnr.state.ga.us
>
> >>> Ivor Surveyor <isurveyor at vianet.net.au> 12/18/2006 18:29 >>>
>The following report is from the
>AUSTRALIAN.    Can somebody please explain what
>is meant by a "unit of radioactivity," as quoted in the article.
>
>Russian spy's fatal dose of poison cost $13m
>Correspondents in London
>19dec06
>
>BRITISH police believe the radioactive substance
>used to kill former Russian spy Alexander
>Litvinenko cost more than $US10 million ($13 million).
>
>According to The Times, preliminary results from
>the post-mortem examination on Litvinenko's body
>have shown he was given more than 10 times the
>lethal dose of polonium-210, large quantities of
>which were found in his urine.
>
>"Only a state-sponsored organisation could obtain
>such a large amount of polonium-210 without
>raising suspicion on the international market,"
>said Alexander Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko.
>
>United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, based in New
>Mexico - one of the few companies allowed to sell
>polonium-210 over the internet - said it would
>take at least 15,000 units of the isotope to kill someone.
>
>With each unit costing $US69, it would have cost
>more than $US10 million to deliver Litvinenko's fatal dose.
>
>"You can't buy this much off the internet or
>steal it from a laboratory without raising an
>alarm, so the only two plausible explanations for
>the source are that it was obtained from a
>nuclear reactor or very well-connected
>black-market smugglers," an unidentified British security source said.
>
>British detectives working on the case in Moscow
>were due to return to Britain this week.
>
>Security sources said Russian officials refused
>to ask questions of Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri
>Kovtun - both of whom met Litvinenko on the day
>he fell ill - that British detectives wanted
>answered. They had not complained publicly
>because of the importance of the case to
>diplomatic relations between Britain and Russia.
>
>High-ranking Kremlin officials have mocked
>Litvinenko's boasts, after he defected to
>Britain, about his role in their security services.
>
>Minister of Defence Sergei Ivanov claimed that
>Litvinenko, far from being a top KGB spy as he
>liked to claim, was merely a prison guard.
>
>Mr Ivanov said Litvinenko had never had access to
>secret or important information and was "of such
>poor character" he was dismissed from the Russian
>security agency when it was being run by Vladimir Putin.
>
>"He was never a spy and never knew anything of
>any real value to give to any (foreign
>intelligence) service," Mr Ivanov said. "He was
>just a Russian who meant nothing to us."
>
>Referring to the letter in which Litvinenko
>accused the Kremlin of poisoning him, Mr Ivanov
>said:"We didn't care what he said and what he wrote on his deathbed."
>
>Kremlin officials again described the accusations
>of Russian involvement made by Litvinenko and his friends as ludicrous.
>
>Valentin Velichko, a colonel who is president of
>Honour and Dignity, a powerful group of KGB
>veterans, dismissed Litvinenko as "a nonentity".
>
>He said in an interview with the Rossiiskaya
>Gazeta newspaper that Litvinenko was never a
>target for Russian intelligence because he was
>not important enough to bother with.
>
>The Times, AFP
>
>privacy       terms      © The Australian
>
>Ivor Surveyor, MD (Brist), FRACP, FRCP
>Emeritus Consultant Physician, Nuclear Medicine,
>Royal Perth Hospital.
>
>[isurveyor at vianet.net.au]
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