Spy death linked to nuclear thefts

[Henk Elegeert]

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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1957279,00.html
Spy death linked to nuclear thefts | UK News | The
Observer

"
Spy death linked to nuclear thefts

Mark Townsend, Antony Barnett and Tom Parfitt
Sunday November 26, 2006
The Observer


An investigation was under way last night into
Russia's black market trade in radioactive materials
amid concern that significant quantities of polonium
210, the substance that killed former spy Alexander
Litvinenko, are being stolen from poorly protected
Russian nuclear sites.

As British police drew up a list of witnesses for
questioning over the death, experts warned that
thefts from nuclear facilities in the former Soviet
Union were a major problem.

A senior source at the United Nations nuclear
inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy
Agency, told The Observer he had no doubt that the
killing of Litvinenko was an 'organised operation'
which bore all the hallmarks of a foreign
intelligence agency. The expert in radioactive
materials said the ability to obtain polonium 210
and the knowledge needed to use it to kill
Litvinenko meant that the attack could not have been
carried out by a 'lone assassin'.

Article continues
Suggestions that the death may have involved some
form of state sponsorship were being investigated by
MI5 and MI6 who are looking at theories that foreign
agents may have been behind the death of Litvinenko.
Scotland Yard has asked the Kremlin for help with
its inquiries, though Russia has dismissed any
involvement in the death as 'absurd'. Litvinenko
received British citizenship this month.

A senior British security source said they were
providing the police with material in 'hostile
intelligence agencies' operating in the UK,
including those from Russia. He said: 'Russia has
never really decreased its activity in the UK from
the end of the Cold War.'

Privately, however, there is deep scepticism in
Whitehall about whether the Putin administration
would be willing to risk a crisis in British-Russian
relations by directly authorising an assassination
of a British citizen on British soil, particularly
using a method that might involve other Britons
being contaminated. The two countries are currently
engaged in delicate negotiations over energy security.

More than anything, the death of the London-based
former KGB spy has placed Russia's still thriving
trade in radioactive material under scrutiny. 'From
the terrorism threat standpoint, these cases are of
little concern but they show security
vulnerabilities at facilities,' said an IAEA spokesman.

One of the few figures available, on a database
compiled by researchers at Stanford University in
the US, revealed that about 40kg of weapons-usable
uranium and plutonium were stolen from poorly
protected nuclear facilities in the former Soviet
Union between 1991 and 2002. Although the IAEA has
no confirmation of polonium finding its way into the
underground trade, there have been several
unconfirmed reports of thefts.

In 1993 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reported
that 10kg of polonium had disappeared from the
Sarov, which produces the rare radioactive material
and is described as Russia's own version of Los
Alamos, the US government's nuclear research base in
New Mexico.

Globally there have been more than 300 cases during
the past four years where individuals have been
caught trying to smuggle radioactive material. In
2005 there were 103 confirmed incidents of
trafficking and other unauthorised activities
involving nuclear and radioactive materials, many
involving Russia.

In one incident, in the remote west of former Soviet
Georgia, a group of woodsmen found two capsules of
the material which was emitting heat in a forest.
They used them to keep warm at night but soon
developed acute radiation sickness. The capsules
turned out to be the highly radioactive strontium 90
core of a nuclear generator from a long abandoned
aircraft navigation beacon.

Meanwhile in Britain, Cobra, No 10's crisis
committee, met again yesterday to discuss emerging
findings in the police investigation and in public
health.

The Foreign Office held a meeting on Friday with the
Russian ambassador to request full co-operation from
the Russian government in the police investigation,
including making witnesses available. Officials from
the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in
Aldermaston, Berkshire, and Porton Down, the
government's Defence Science and Technology
Laboratory, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, were trying
last night to track down the precise source of the
polonium 210 that killed Litvinenko.

No date has been set for a post mortem examination
on Litvinenko until a risk assessment is carried out
to see if it is safe to perform the procedure, and
if so, what precautions would be necessary.
"

Henk Elegeert

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