The Litvinenko files: Polonium

The accepted wisdom has been that polonium-210 is produced only in Russia and that the particular laboratory, its jurisdiction and so the identity of the organisation that gave the crucial order, would be easily identified. Since then, no names have been named, even though the "right" answers should surely bolster the British contention that Russia, or the former KGB, was behind the killing.

Unofficially, the Avangard plant at Sarov, east of Moscow, is thought the likely source. So why have British officials not named it? One explanation is that the police are holding back such details for fear of jeopardising the accused's chance of a fair trial. Given that a trial now seems such a remote prospect, though, it is hard to see why this information is still not in the public domain. Another explanation might be that the answers do not fit the favoured theory.

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What is certain is that Russia is not the only producer of polonium-210. Epstein (among others) reports that, while Russia produces it for export to the United States (!), any country with a nuclear reactor not subject to IAEA inspection can produce it – they include China, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea. So the consolation that there is only Russia to worry about is flat wrong.

But there is another, and perhaps bigger, problem. Scientists who know anything about polonium-210 find it hard to believe that anyone would choose it as a murder weapon against one individual, even if the purpose was to evade detection. For a start, it is extremely expensive. But it also fits much more comfortably into another scenario: that of nuclear smuggling. It seems far more likely that the polonium tracked in London was part of some sort of deal – a deal that, for whatever reason, went disastrously wrong.

Demand for polonium-210 on the illegal international market is as a key element in detonating a nuclear explosion. This is why it commands such a fantastically high price – hundreds of thousands, if not the many millions, of dollars mentioned by some. Money, and even nuclear terrorism, thus emerge as plausible motives to compete with the theory of a Putin-inspired political assassination. Either would entail embarrassment for the British authorities, for it would suggest that illegal nuclear trafficking was going on under their very noses, with all the attendant dangers to the population. It also raises the question of border security. The small matter of how such a lethal substance got into the country pertains, of course, regardless of its intended purpose. So far, however, this crucial question has been successfully muffled by the horror of the presumed crime and the blanket allegation that "the Russians did it".