The Russians are circling the waggons, refusing to cooperate in the investigation of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. The former spy died in Britain, after being exposed to a lethal poison incorporating the radioactive element polonium-210. You know the Russians are hiding something when they resort to bald-faced lies. The Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika made the outrageous statement that the poison could not have come from Russia. That would only be true if the Soviet space program used up every last bit of polonium for the Lunokhod moon walker program. They certainly had enough polonium on hand in 1970 to keep not one, but two moon rovers warm through the frigid lunar night.
From the Independent, Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika says something that clearly could not be true:
Russia will not extradite suspects in the Alexander Litvinenko case to Britain, its chief prosecutor said today.
Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika also insisted that the radioactive element used to poison the former spy could not have come from Russia.
In a press conference today, Mr Chaika said the polonium 210 found in Mr Litvinenko's system could not have originated in Russia.
I wonder how he can say that. Does he mean that the Russians have such tight controls on radioactive material that no amount could have been used as a poison?
That's absurd, since it is well known that in the chaos that is post-Soviet Russia, anything can be had for a price. And in any case, the suspicion is that this was a government operation, so if polonium-210 was under the control of the government, then clearly it could be diverted for this purpose.
Or does Chaika mean that there is no polonium-210 in Russia at all? There was plenty in 1970, when it was used for the Lunokhod missions:
Lunokhod (Russian for "Moon walker") 1 and 2 were a pair of unmanned lunar rovers landed on the Moon by the Soviet Union. They were in operation conterminously with the Zond series of flyby missions. The Lunokhod missions were primarily designed to explore the surface and return pictures. This complemented the Luna series of missions that were intended to be sample return missions and orbiters. They were designed by NPO Lavochkin.
The [Lunokhod 1] rover would run during the lunar day, stopping occasionally to recharge its batteries via the solar panels. At night the rover would hibernate until the next sunrise, heated by the radioactive energy source...During the lunar nights...a polonium-210 heat source kept the internal components at operating temperature.
Power [for Lunokhod 2] was supplied by a solar panel on the inside of a round hinged lid which covered the instrument bay, which would charge the batteries when opened. A polonium-210 radioactive heat source was used to keep the rover warm during the long lunar nights.
Lunokhod 1 worked for nearly a year, and Lunokhod 2 operated for over four months. It would take a lot of polonium-210 to generate that much heat over that period of time.
Russia had plenty of polonium-210 on hand in 1970, and nothing has changed. These sorts of absurd statements serve no purpose except to dramatically increase the suspicion that the Russian government has something to hide.
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And with a 138-day half life the Po-210 in existence on 12/31/1970 would have undergone about 95 half lives since then. Since half life means the time to transmute x amount of Po-210 to x/2, today there's 1 / 2^95 of the original amount remaining. Given the 1-step decay chain of Po-210, the overwhelming majority has been converted to Pb-208. Lead. Inert lead, ready to poison the Roman elites through their plumbing.
Posted by: Captain Ned at December 5, 2006 08:11 PM
So, based on that formula, the British probably have a clue how "fresh" this Po210 actually is. And a list of how many facilities worldwide are still producing the stuff.
Posted by: john at December 6, 2006 10:57 AM
I think that depends upon how the body reacts to Po-210 and Pb-208 and how he was dosed with it. If a pebble sized piece was slipped into his food and the human body didn't somehow break it up into smaller pieces then I think you could figure out how 'fresh' it is. If he was dosed with a powder or the human body has some way of breaking large pieces of heavy metals into smaller pieces then you probably wouldn't be able to tell.
I put fresh in quotes because it would be pretty complicated to determine how old any Po-210 sample is and then compare it to a list of manufacturers/sources, but it shouldn't be impossible with a big enough piece.
Posted by: Iron Oxide at December 6, 2006 12:42 PM
Only one facet of Russian Mafia crime Central.
Noticed how Putin*s SRV / KGB simply snuffs dissenting journalists like they did in Stalin*s time?
Notice how they answer in the affirmative to help Westerners curb MASSIVE net servers crime, yet do absolutely ZERO?
Beware: Valueh0st.co.uk and 5755.ru
Attackers target Russian hosting firm
At least 470 Valueh0st sites carrying malware scripts
Shaun Nichols in California, vnunet.com 04 Dec 2006
A Russian hosting company with ties to the UK and the US has become the victim of a huge hack attack, a security firm warned today.
Valueh0st is reportedly hosting over 470 servers that are infected with scripts that attempt to run malware on a user's computer.
Security firm Kaspersky Lab reported that a user contacted the company after he had noticed " strange behaviour" from his browser. The antivirus software vendor said the site contained scripts that downloaded a Trojan installer.
According to Kaspersky, the user visited www[dot]5755.ru after seeing the site advertised on TV. Upon visiting the site, a second browser window was launched and the malicious scripts then attempted to run.
Kaspersky Lab said that it later found that more than 470 other servers had been compromised with the same attack. Those servers, according to Kaspersky, were all traced back to Valueh0st.
Valueh0st offers hosting services to more than 60,000 Russian sites, and the company also offers hosting in the UK and the US. 5755.ru, valueh0st.com and valueh0st.co.uk were all down at the time of publication of this article.
Valueh0st had not responded to requests for comment as of press time.===== [ Typical ] ===
In May, Valueh0st's email addresses were spoofed in order to carry out an email Trojan attack.
http://tinyurl[.]com/yn8q3r
=============
Russian Servers crime is on Overdrive. = TG
Posted by: TG at December 7, 2006 12:42 AM
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Posted by: 20monyka@hotmail.com at April 1, 2007 06:18 PM
t6hu56m_54_t_1_n100
Posted by: 54dmitry@hotmail.com at April 18, 2007 12:21 PM