[John H K]

The other thing is the final testing on this stuff is assuredly not going to be done by the Marines.

I don't mean to insult the Marines or anything, but they're a "lean and mean" fighting force with a lot fewer of the specialist troops even the Army has. I'm sure they have people that can test for nuclear materials but I really seriously doubt they have a vastly-experienced highly-educated nuclear exploitation team.

If this was Prine talking to people from NEST or the Department of Energy or the NRC that had been brought in, I'd be a lot more confident.

The problem is people from NEST or DoE or the NRC would almost certainly not talk to embedded reporters wandering around in the middle of their testing.

[Poohbah]

I don't mean to insult the Marines or anything, but they're a "lean and mean" fighting force with a lot fewer of the specialist troops even the Army has. I'm sure they have people that can test for nuclear materials but I really seriously doubt they have a vastly-experienced highly-educated nuclear exploitation team.

Actually, they do--one of the previous Commandant's initiatives was to grab the NBC event first response mission.