The Litvinenko Inquiry

Part 9 | Chapters 1 to 12 | Who directed the killing?
or remove the polonium 210 that has been created in this way from the remaining
bismuth target.
9.53 Professor Dombey explained that in the Russian production programme the first stage
of this process – i.e. the irradiation of the bismuth target – takes place in a nuclear
reactor at the Mayak facility (formerly known as Chelyabinsk), near Ozersk. The
second stage of the manufacturing process, i.e. the recovery of polonium 210 from
the irradiated bismuth, is undertaken at a special production plant at the Avangard
facility in Sarov (formerly known as Arzamas-16). 16 For convenience, I shall refer to
this production programme as ‘the Avangard programme’.
9.54 Professor Dombey stated that the Avangard programme manufactured 0.8 grams of
polonium 210 every month, and that this entire amount was routinely exported to the
USA. 17
9.55 He further explained that on arrival in the USA, the polonium 210 was split and placed
in tiny amounts into sealed sources that were then sold for use in devices such as
anti-static guns.
9.56 The police made enquiries into the export of polonium from Russia to the USA, and
DI Mascall gave evidence about the results of those enquiries. 18 His evidence was
consistent with the more detailed evidence given by Professor Dombey.
9.57 It follows from all of this (and again, I think that this is uncontroversial) that Russia,
i.e. the Avangard programme, could unquestionably have been the source of the
polonium 210 ingested by Mr Litvinenko.
9.58 However, during the course of the Inquiry, various lines of evidence and argument
were raised which, potentially at least, took the matter further. The logic of these
different theories was that the polonium 210 used to kill Mr Litvinenko either probably
came, or even must have come, from Russia.
9.59 Taken at their highest, these lines of evidence, which are independent of each other,
suggested that there might be a direct link between the polonium 210 ingested by
Mr Litvinenko and Russia as its place of production. Evidence was called in relation
to each of these theories, and I shall address them in turn below.
Forensic matching/fingerprinting of polonium 210 samples
9.60 In Death of a Dissident, the book that they published in 2007, Alex Goldfarb and Marina
Litvinenko advanced what has been described as a ‘fingerprint’ theory, suggesting
that every batch of commercially produced polonium 210 contains characteristic and
detectable impurities, by which it can subsequently be traced and identified. What
they said was as follows: 19
“When Polonium-210 decays – its half-life is 138 days, meaning that half of any
given amount decays in the first 138 days, followed by a fourth in the next 138
days, and so on – it turns into lead, a nonradioactive metal. As the amount of
polonium decreases, the amount of lead increases. By measuring the proportion of
16
Dombey 23/20-32
17
Dombey 23/24-30; INQ020031 (page 2 paragraphs S9-S10)
18
Mascall 29/77-78
19
Death of Dissident, pp.337-338
217