Radioisotopes are used for various industrial, medical and resource related tasks. They are fairly well tracked, documented and shielded most places.
The men and women on the ship are experts. No all clear yet tells me there is likely something sinister to this.
Does anybody believe they were unable to get onboard yeasterday? Choppers fly in hurricains and this is more serious then a heart attack (well anybody but me having a heart attack).
"Does anyone know of any "normal" cargo that would emit background radiation?"
It doesn't take a whole lot of brains to put 2 + 2 together.
Many of us have been able to piece enough together from the little bits and pieces that have been leaked out, plus reading between the lines enough, to discern that there is a very high probability that there are one or more nuclear devices (or parts thereof) out there in the hands of terrorists. The 64 kT question was whether or not they had ALL the pieces that they needed to actually have a functioning device, especially the fissile material and some fresh tritium to seed the chain reaction. Now, putting some fresh 2 + 2 together, it looks to be pretty high probability that the answer was: YES!
Thank the Lord, this one apparently was found. The NEXT 64 kT question: Is this the ONLY ONE. . . or do they have MORE?