A Mental Hospital, The Miner’s Strike, Yasser Arafat and an Israeli Whistleblower
A Mental Hospital, The Miner’s Strike, Yasser Arafat and an Israeli Whistleblower
In search of Polonium – The War Series Part 6
According to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission the natural decay of Uranium 238, present in the earth’s crust, produces such tiny amounts of Polonium 210 that it would be almost impossible to become poisoned by the element in nature. The chain of decay for Polonium 210 is as follows. Each element has a half-life, which is the amount of time it takes for it to decay by half, then turning in to the next element in the chain. The toxicity of radioactive substances are gauged by their half-lives and by the amount of gamma radiation and beta and alpha particles they emit. Polonium 210 emits significant levels of alpha particles, but only 1 in 100,000 of the discharges from Polonium 210 is in the form of gamma radiation. It has a half-life of 138 days, which is relatively short for radioactive material.
Radon Gas and Underground Disturbances
Radon 222, the sixth decay ‘daughter’ from Uranium 238, is one of the isotopes of Radon gas, a halogen, which occurs naturally in the earth’s crust. Radon 220 or Thoron is a member of the decay chain of Thorium but also belongs to this isotope family when in this state. The natural incidence of radon 222 is 4 times higher than radon 220 (80% to 20%). Radon is colourless, odourless and relatively soluble in water. It is also denser than air.
Radonmap.com by ‘Airthings’, a CERN particle physics project to provide radon detectors, launched a web based app in 2008. This app gives a rough idea where the highest pockets of radon potential are globally. High radon potential might also indicate the presence of high levels of Uranium 238 and its other decay products.
The British Geological Survey Onshore Geoindex gives a more detailed outline of radon potential across the nation. You can find this layer by tapping Topics, then the Hazards tabs. Radon Indicative Atlas is at the bottom of the Hazards list. The potential release of radon relates to amounts that could be released if the earth underneath is disturbed in some way. Radon is a gas and can seep through earth underneath traditional suspended floor boards, and cracks in solid foundations. If a home is well sealed, the gas can build up creating a hazard. Frequent ventilation prevents build up and lowers interior levels and risks of inhalation. Radon release may be partially why ventilation was recommended during the initial stages of Covid-19.
Radon 222, 7 decay stages behind Polonium 210, has a short half-life of 3.83 days. It can remain as a ion or atom, or will bind easily and swiftly with dust particles or condensation nuclei (droplets of water). Like Polonium 210, it primarily emits alpha particles, which are formed of two neutrons and two protons, and are identical in structure to Helium-4 atoms. They carry a strong positive charge of 2+. Even though they only travel for a short distance on their own, this can be extended by attachment to particles. When alpha particles make contact with mucus membranes they can damage DNA and cellular structures within a small radius of contact.
Studies have shown that two isotopes Radon 222rn and Thoron 220rn together can be accurate predictors of earthquakes. Radon 222rn on it’s own however, is not an accurate predictor as levels in underground caves can fluctuate, being higher in summer months and lower in winter months according to this study by Yong Hwa Oh and Guebuem Kim (2105)
Most importantly, decayed radon produces heavy metal radioisotopes, decaying very rapidly through polonium 201, Lead 214, Bismuth 214 and Polonium 2014 until it gets to Lead 210. Lead 210 has a half-life of 22.2 years, an easy figure to remember in relation to Radon 222, or approximately 8103 days, leaving aside leap years. If we then add the other half-life decay times that sit inbetween Polonium 210 and Radon 222, we come to approximately 8108 days. Therefore, if Litvinenko was poisoned on November 1st, 2006 by naturally forming Polonium 210 from Radon gas release, it would have had to have been released some time between the 3rd and 4th week of August, 1984.
Nineteen Eighty-four
The year 1984 is synonymous with Eric Arthur Blair’s (George Orwell) book of the same name. The dystopian novel of a totalitarian regime where everyone lives under the watchful eye of Big Brother, was published in June 1949, as the Cold War was just beginning. ‘Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-four as a warning after years of brooding on the twin menaces of Nazism and Stalinism’. Blair also wrote Animal Farm which was published on the 17th August 1945. It was also a reference to the Soviet Union, a ‘political fable based on the events of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution and the betrayal of the cause by Joseph Stalin’.
There is a single reference to August (thank you to everyone who went hunting through their digital and paper editions!). In Chapter 10, Winston contemplates the ‘pale cloudless sky’, which is strange as we would normally associate a cloudless day with deep blue. A reminder of how the condition of the sky has dominated since World War II as a tool for war? There are 12 references to sky, two of which mention the ‘dome’ of the sky, and another reference to the sky being the same for hundreds of millions of people no matter where they are in the world. A unifying element perhaps. There are also three mentions of poison. On page 33 in the digital kindle edition ‘But it needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain poison, were completely unprocurable’.
The Novel seems to forecast the future again in Chapter 9 ‘War is Peace’, page 65 ‘...others search for new and deadlier gases, or for soluble poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole continents, or for breeds of disease germs immunised against all possible antibodies; others strive to produce a vehicle that shall bore its way under the soil like a submarine...’ Many of these were already born from the World Wars. Blair also mentions weapons that mimic what we believe to be natural phenomena, ‘producing artificial earthquakes and tidal waves by tapping the heat at the earth’s centre’. It was as if Blair had been given a list of weapons projects to include in his novel. The only keywords we didn’t find were radiation, polonium and radon, which seems strange considering the Manhattan Project and the bombing of Hiroshima.
Soluble Poisons and Breeds of Disease Germs
Coincidences aside, in real life 1984 there was a significant outbreak of a stomach bug at a hospital in Wakefield. The New York Times reported on September 9th the outbreak began approximately two weeks ago, but was not more specific. The article mentions that both patients and staff members resident at the Stanley Royd Mental Hospital on Aberford Road in Wakefield were poisoned. 336 patients and between 40 and 50 members of staff became sick and 24 patients died. The BBC reported investigators were baffled about the source of the outbreak. See above and the previous article on Litvinenko and the effects of alpha particle poisoning.
The morning of 26th August, Bank Holiday Sunday, saw the first patient sicken, with a further 36 patients symptomatic by 9:15, and the first death at 11:35 within hours of the beginning of the outbreak. Spread of illness was lightning fast. The Cross-Infection Committee and the Wakefield Health Authority District Medical Officer convened by Tuesday the 28th August and Environmental Health were contacted. At this point 240 people were infected and Salmonella identified. What we now know is that pathogenic bacteria populations rarely take hold unless the patient is somehow compromised, and that can occur through chemical poisoning and/or radiation poisoning. Salmonella Typhimurium also has resistance to a variety of heavy metals and metalloids. Many strains of the genus are naturally present in the gut in an immunologically balanced population.
After the outbreak, which garnered a significant amount of attention in local, national and international press, a paper was written looking at the learning outcomes from how this event was handled. The paper is available on the way back machine here. Contamination was eventually narrowed down to cold cuts of beef, which had been left to the elements for 10 hours without refrigeration in a hot day. According to this account only 19 patients died at the Stanley Royd Hospital. The report mentions that issues of food safety were a significant new area of focus for the Health Authority already in the 1970’s, blamed on higher consumption of convenience foods and chicken. Incidences of food poisoning were rife, the same hospital experiencing a similar but less severe outbreak in 1979.
The Mining Connection
The mental hospital building sits on the north west edge of an area of high radon potential. There are a number of mining shafts surrounding it and most of the area underneath Wakefield is designated underground working. Coal mining is one of the industries that can release high levels of ‘naturally occuring radioactive material’. Other industries include oil and gas extraction/refining, metals mining/smelting, fertilizer production, mining rare earth minerals, the building industry and recycling. Apart from Radon, other gases can also be released from ground disturbances including methane, (particularly volatile and prone to combustion), carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide. Combusted coal can also release mercury, arsine, stibine and other toxic gases.
The mine shaft closest to the hospital had been shut since 1960 according to the Coal Authority data, and there were no obvious ground disturbances that might have triggered a release of gases, therefore it is unlikely to have been related to the mine shafts. The second half of August, however, was the second hottest period of the century, the first being the heat wave of 1976. Given the outbreak was limited to the initial hospital and only one or two patients from a neighbouring one, both air conditioning and water supply contamination could have been considered.
It also happened that the outbreak in the mental hospital was 6 months in to the 12 month national miner’s strike. Margaret Thatcher, unlike David Lloyd George who presided over the General Strike of 1926, actively prevented the Soviet Union from giving money to the miners to support them during the strike. Mikhail Gorbechev, deputy leader of the Soviet Government at the time, had signed off on Soviet miners being able to transfer money they had supposedly collected in wages to the Miner’s Union. This despite agreeing Soviet authorities would not get involved in transfer of funds. By doing so in effect the USSR was influencing internal political decision making.
Recently Boris Johnson controversially stated that Margaret Thatcher took the first big steps to get on top of ‘Climate Change’ through the closure of the mines. It is entirely possible that the waves of attacks we have seen in recent years, are closely connected to this period of unrest in Britain. Were the mines shut for other reasons than making an economic and industrial shift? Unions in Britain had a long history of aligned political ideology and activism with the Communist Party of the USSR.
The leader of the National Union of Mining had belonged to the Young Communist League and became a member of the National Executive Committee. In the article The New Unionism, Arthur Scargill says ‘Many of us started in the 1950’s in the Young Communist League. So that was my initial introduction into socialism and into political militancy. My father was a Communist.’ He was always a unionist, seeing that real power lay with the working class, or conversely with the upper class, but nowhere inbetween. Scargill, as detailed in the Lightman Report, sought funds to support the miner’s strike both from the USSR and Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi.
Was the whole industry closed because to leave British mines open would have been a security risk? Routes to underground attacks? Combined with the release of toxic gases upon combustion, shutting down the industry may not have had the exclusive motive of taking away work from the miners.
The Strange case of Yasser Arafat
As the decay rates from Radon 222 to Polonium 210 are lengthy, Radon gas inhalation over time and subsequent decay products, seems a particularly long and drawn out way to die. One, however, that might permit blame to be levelled at nature (let’s ignore ground disturbance for the moment).
When items from Yasser Arafat’s final days in hospital were tested, including underwear and a hat, Polonium 210 was said to be present in high quantities despite his lack of immune system suppression and hair loss. When the Swiss Laboratory, tasked by his wife, tested samples of rib, pelvis, hair and skin tissue 8 years later, the report would ‘moderately support’ a conclusion of Polonium 210 poisoning in this article by the Guardian. In fact lead was also present in the body but the Guardian gives no indication of what form it was in.
In a further twist, French researchers publishing a paper in 2015, found that ‘Significantly higher (up to 20 times) activities of 210Po and lead-210 (210Pb) were found in the ribs, iliac crest and sternum specimens compared to reference samples from the literature’. This is puzzling because Lead 210 is the precursor to Polonium 210, not a decay product of Polonium 210. But there is a problem.
Polonium 210 can be created from the bombardment of Bismuth 209, which is a ubiquitous and weakly radioactive substance, so weak that it is less radioactive than human skin. In the paper ‘A route for polonium 210 production from alpha irradiated bismuth-209 target’ by Younes et al. (2014) a method of bombarding Bismuth 209 foil of less than 3ppm lead impurity was detailed. It was bombarded with a 37 MeV alpha particle beam, turning first in to Astatine, which then decays to Polonium 210. The more common method of Polonium 210 production involves the neutron bombardment of Bismuth 209, which decays in to Bismuth 210, then further in to Polonium 210. Bismuth 210 of course has a half life of 5 days.
If Yasser Arafat were poisoned with manufactured Polonium 210, when his body was tested 8 years after his death the only lead that should have been present was Lead 206, the daughter decay product of Polonium 210. The presence of Lead 210 implies that natural decay was taking place after death, not the decay of a manufactured Polonium 210 from either of the two routes detailed above.
Under his compound in Ramallah in the West Bank radon potential is low according to the radon app. The compound sits next to Arafat’s old office building which has now been converted into the Yasser Arafat Museum. Arafat was confined to this compound by Israeli authorities for the last three years of his life. Was Arafat somehow exposed to the precursors to Polonium 210 over a long period of time, during his travels or residence, which then settled in his bones and slowly decayed over time in to the lethal isotope? Could a less energetic isotope from the decay chain be administered in extremely low doses, without being detected, or necessarily causing illness, until such time that the damage was so extensive he became irreversibly ill and died?
If this were possible it would be incredibly difficult to pin point when poisoning began and who was the assassin. It could even be more than one person.
The presence of Polonium 210 in the urine of Litvinenko is certain, yet until just a few hours before he died, doctors thought he had been poisoned with Thallium. Might it also be that he had been poisoned with nanodoses of a precursor to Polonium such as Lead 210, over a number of encounters? Would precursor beta particles have been detected with the equipment used to trace the Polonium 210 across London?
Official and Unofficial Nuclear facilities
Russia makes commercial Polonium 210 as an anti-static isotope for paper production and similar industries. It takes approximately one tonne of Uranium ore to produce 100 micrograms of Polonium 210. The Russian Avantgard facility is 700 miles south of Moscow. A Russian spokesperson stated clearly in the Moscow Times, January 11, 2007, that many other facilities around the world would also have the equipment and reactors required to produce Polonium 210. The Russian reactor produced approximately 85 grams per year at the time of writing for commercial purposes. Production and transportation was carefully regulated together with the four organisations involved. Of course it is always possible, if authorities allowed, to circumvent the usual channels. Alternatively the material could have been intercepted on its way to a buyer, or indeed when it arrived, and as Polonium 210 goes to buyers all over the world, the source would be difficult to pin down. It also seems somewhat obvious that the main production facility of Polonium 210 and the country which regulates it would be labelled the source of material to poison Litvinenko.
It has become clear, however, reading about the behaviour of various countries, signed up to or refusing to sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, that nothing is ever that straight forward. Israel for example continues its refusal. The Israeli Negev Nuclear Research Facility sits to the south east of Dimona close to the Dead Sea and the Jordanian border. The site was shrouded in secrecy when construction began of the French/Israeli project in 1958 and the nuclear reactor came online between 1962 and 1964. France was assisting under an agreement called the Protocol of Sevres, a secret pact in 1956 between the French, British and Israelis to overthrow Gamal Abdel Nasser, the military leader of Egypt, who set up the United Arab Republic (1958-1961). He acquired power in 1951 by overthrowing the Egyptian Monarchy. France provided components such as the reactor tank for the nuclear facility under the guise of desalination equipment. This was done without consultation or the knowledge of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
When asked during a trip near the facility, Israeli Addy Cohen told US officials that it was a textile manufacturing plant. US officials were concerned when they discovered it was a nuclear facility, not least because questions posed to Israeli officials about the aims of the project were not answered with a level of reassuring openness. Norway (see link here) had secretly agreed with Israel to provide heavy water, and a covert source reported that the facility was experimenting with plutonium. Two comments including Cohen intimating Israel was ‘misbehaving’ with regard to the project, alarmed the US Embassy in Tel Aviv enough to report to the US Governement. Over the tense years that followed the US government, under Kissinger, agreed that as long as the Israeli weapons programme remained ‘restrained and invisible’ according to the paper ‘Israeli nuclear weapons, 2021’ by Kristensen and Korda (2022), then there would be no need to keep pressuring Israel to sign the Treaty.
An Israeli whistleblower?
Warhead estimates stored at this site vary wildly, but are believe to be in the region of 90 or less. The role that the reported whistleblower played, a man of Jewish Moroccan origin, Mordechai Vanunu, is also curious. He worked at the Negev facility, after serving in the Israeli army for a short period, living at home with his parents in Be’er Sheva, just 40 km away. In 1985 he left the plant having been apparently fired according to Haaretz, but made redundant according to the Guardian. Before leaving he took a series of approximately 60 photos of the largely underground nuclear facility. Some of these feature a negative pressure glove box, used for tooling radioactive material. This type of glove box would also be used in handling radioactive isotopes such as Polonium 210. The photos, according to those analysing them, appeared to show that Israel was capable of producing a low yield two-stage neutron bomb, which was regarded to be one of the most sophisticated types of nuclear weapon.
Apparently, after leaving the facility, Vanunu backpacked all the way to Australia through 1985 and 1986, converting to Christianity on arrival. Apparently he had found acceptance in the Israeli Jewish community as a Moroccan Jew difficult. Vanunu’s possession of information and photographs about the Negev facility came to light during a church event on peace and nuclear proliferation. Freelance Colombian journalist, Oscar Guerrero was attending the discussion. It was he who sought the attention of The Sunday Times Newsdesk in London, who then apparently flew Vanunu to London for interview with Peter Houman. Nuclear expert Frank Barnaby examined the photographs. Peter Houman found Vanunu very amicable and answered all the questions posed to him clearly. Vanunu told him he was dissillusioned with Israel. It is not clear if British intelligence interviewed him during the 12 days he was speaking with Houman.
There was some doubt at The Times about the legitimacy of Vanunu’s testimony. In 2018 Haaretz published an article saying that the Times nearly did not run with the story as they felt some thing was off. Meanwhile, Vanunu travels to Rome and goes dark. It transpires that a female Mossad agent lured him to Rome on 30th September 1986, at which point he is arrested by Mossad. Houman apparently warned him against the invitation to holiday with the woman, who presumably was not known as Mossad. According to Haaretz it seem a particularly sloppy operation, further enhanced by the closed meeting held by Shimon Peres and the Israeli press, which of course was widely discussed in the media and apparently angered Mossad. Yet both elements persuaded The Times to publish the article on the 26th October 1986. Until that point it had been on hold.
Israel, and probably various other intelligence services including MI6, already had him under surveillance when he arrived in London. Mossad did nothing to stop him giving the 12 day interview to The Times. Was this an attempt to give the global nuclear community an insider view of the sophisticated progress Israel had made at that point in nuclear weaponry, or could it have been a distraction from other developments?
The mid 1980s were certainly a very busy time, with the interactions between Russia and the UK with regard to the Miner’s strike, followed in January 1987 by Gorbachev’s calls for democratisation in the USSR, and the beginnings of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Vanunu was officially released under restrictive conditions in April 2004, which meant he could not leave Israel, speak to foreigners nor attend foreign embassies. His emails and phone calls would be monitored. He applied to Norway, Sweden and Ireland for asylum in absentia, but all applications were unsuccessful. International pressure to grant him freedom to seek asylum abroad have so far been denied.
Needless to say, as little as we still know about Israel’s Nuclear Research activities, we also cannot tell if they have the capability to produce materials in the Uranium 238 decay chain.
Endnotes
When questioned about whether he believed Yasser Arafat was killed in November 2004 by Polonium 210 poisoning, Tawfik Tirawi, who headed the committee investigating his death, said the following "It is not important that I say here that he was killed by polonium,...But I say, with all the details available about Yasser Arafat's death, that he was killed, and that Israel killed him”.
Would it be possible, in the context of terrestrial gamma ray flashes from lightning storms, to use the 20-40 MeV energy discharges produced by these flashes to bombard particles of bismuth 209 seeded in the atmosphere. Theoretically these particles would, over days, decay to Polonium 210 and gradually disperse on the wind currents.
Thank you Seb for your collaboration.
Next up… analysing the Skripal poisonings.
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