Nuclear Traces Found at Seattle Port

Damn - very interesting. Of course, it's way easier to pull a cargo container aside to check it. How do you pull a single truck or automobile out of New York City traffic during rush hour while (a) maintaining safety for other drivers and (b) limiting false positives which cause traffic nightmares which result in the population caring less and less about intercepting bad guys.

It would be interesting to know what the protocol is for informing local police, federal, and state agencies who are involved an evacuation. I assume the national response plan has contingencies for such an emergency.

At least I hope it does.

Detecting radiation is very different from discovering actual dangerous material.
A couple of years ago they had a thing on TV about this very subject, and they showed a container that triggered alarms. It was full of ceramic tile, which is naturally radioactive at very small levels, but a container load is going to trigger alarms.
You have to keep in mind that the radiation sensors are set to very high levels of sensitivity, and are going to have false plenty of false alarms. If the setting is too low, then a well insulated real threat would not be detected.
Incomplete stories like the one presented in this article are very damaging, because they can be used, without further explanation as to the reasons behind the alarms, to create fear and uncertainty. It's amazing how easily people can be made to believe things just because they are told a story about it, and they don't make any effort to follow it up to see if there is any truth behind it.

I'm bound to partially agree with Unbound, only I wouldn't call it a damaging or fear-mongering report. Perhaps the titling should have focused on a different angle - rather than focusing on the finding of nuclear traces, maybe it could have been focused on the suspicion of mismanagement on the purchase and use of the technology used in the detection of these nuclear signatures on the Seattle port cargo. Unbound makes some important points about the credibility of the threat posed by this kind of events, but still, I wouldn't go so far as to say the story is irresponsible: on the contrary, Americans should be looking at this issue very closely, considering the disruption this type of event can cause to the enormous effort being made to control US ports traffic.

Still, ingenious reporting, straight from the source.. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone in the mainstream media community trying to develop this story further.

Just some more backup to what Unbound says - yes, there does need to be a distinction between low risk radioactive signatures - like those present in nature - versus those of say, a dirty bomb. 60 Minutes just did a piece on port security and they pulled off a cargo container that was suspicious due to weight differences within the container. The culprit? There were chocolate wafer cookies inside that weighed less than the other cookies that surrounded them. Clearly not a risk to national security!

If those responsible for port security had access to non-invasive monitoring technology - along the lines of terahertz imaging - those kinds of false positives likely would decrease.

Still, ingenious reporting, straight from the source.. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone in the mainstream media community trying to develop this story further.

I would. Unbound is right about the mainstream media. They prefer sensationalism, not factual, useful reporting. That's assuming they get around to sensationalism after wallowing in political mud all day.

But Unbound did need to comment on the importance of the "nuclear signatures." Either quantify the REMs involved, follow up on the cargoes, or mention that there are many false positives. Chances are that a lot of people have more radiation in their basements than these detectors consider normal.

Excuse me. I meant bmvaughn, the original reporter, needed to comment on false positives, etc. Unbound had the proper analysis.

Forget mainstream media picking up on this story, you need to watch out for the writers of '24' :)

Seriously, kudos to bmvaughn. I'm new to NewsVine and this is exactly the type of site I've been dreaming about for a while. Aggregation of existing news, coupled with amateur and semi-professional journalists. Very exciting.