Re:Swiss forensic report on Arafat's death
by ucha on Wednesday November 06, 2013 @04:08PM
(#6685521)
Widely used? Easily available? Where and by who?
Re:Swiss forensic report on Arafat's death
by bashinator on Wednesday November 06, 2013 @06:28PM
(#6686345)
Right here, by anybody in the U.S.
http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cP...
Re:Swiss forensic report on Arafat's death
by capnrefsmmat on Wednesday November 06, 2013 @06:58PM
(#6686509)
You'd need thousands of those button sources to make a lethal dose of Po-210.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/po...
> They are typically in a form that, if ingested, would pose no health problem, and the radiation is so small that they do not pose a hazard even if the polonium were to be absorbed. It would take 30,000 of these exempt quantities to represent the 3-millicurie fatal dose estimate.
Button sources are typically of the size where you wouldn't mind letting undergrads gnaw on them during their physics labs. The worst they could do is choke.
Or maybe not. It is very well known that Russian security services brutally murdered Litvinenko, but there is remarkably little evidence. The only evidence, in fact, is that "everyone knows it". What if new data will make you reconsider this well known wisdom?
> What motivates the use of a radioactive element that very few possess?
It is very widely used and easily available.