Talk:List of civilian nuclear accidents
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[edit] POV and (worse) unencyclopedic
This page has crept into Wikipedia for the most part without sources and without discussion (witness this is the first entry on the discussion page!!). It is a mishmash of rumour and exaggeration with the occasional fact almost buried under a pile of invective and emotion.
Specifically this page represents an anti-nuclear POV. It involves the usual confounding of nuclear power and nuclear weapons incidents, with a few randoms, throwing up any incident no matter how minor. A simple example is the first (X-ray) incident, which is not "nuclear" at all, but is recounted for scary effect.
I am marking it disputed and will be back to clean it up or propose it for deletion, unless the original authors care to start giving the page proper focus and especially proper sources for the more obscure pieces (the majority) that are on here.
Joffan 03:44, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
- This article was forked from List of nuclear accidents. See Talk:List of nuclear accidents for older discussions. --Carnildo 07:19, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
- The article definitley needs pruning. The 1904 entry is based on an ignorant equation of "radiation" and "nuclear". Although a list of nuclear accidents lends itself naturally to the appearance of anti-nuclear POV, I would argue against deletion of the entire article. It would be appropriate to excise all unsourced and irrelevant entries.--DocS 13:46, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I checked the precursor talk, thanks for the link Carnildo. It seems that Bcrowell was making much the same observations as I was, that the list is vague in scope and includes many entries that are not accidents. After the fork it also includes many entries that are arguably not civilian either. It may still include accidents that are merely proximate to nuclear material, which really doesn't make them nuclear, although the totally off-topic X-ray entry has gone, thanks DocS.
It is important that articles are focussed, otherwise they are not informative. A jumble of this kind is not information, it's just data, and not very reliable data at that. Witness the fact that, irritated as I am by this entry, I still haven't read it all through.
Joffan 17:05, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
- Perhaps the best first step is to generate a sensible definition of what constitutes a "nuclear accident". I would propose criteria along the lines of:
- 1) There must be documented and substantial property damage, illness/injuries/fatalities or contamination (this would exclude, for example, spills of nonradioactive heavy water or near-accidents such as Salem 1983).
- 2) The damage must be related directly to nuclear operations (e.g. the Mihama 2004 incident was a secondary-side, non-radioactive steam accident - not nuclear).
- These two criteria alone would cut away a lot of non-relevant entries.
- --DocS 19:02, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
As to article focus, maybe this list (once its problems are corrected) should ultimately become an appendix to, or subsection of, a more general discussion on civilian nuclear accidents/safety. --DocS 19:07, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Regarding entries removed as "unsourced": I am removing entries that are not supported by direct references, linked wiki articles or the "Reference" resources at the end of this article. Exceptions are significant incidents (TMI, Chernobyl), which will instead be revised with appropriate sources. --DocS 16:45, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
- You might want to try again on finding a reference for the Lucens reactor meltdown. The reference.com article you've linked to is a Wikipedia mirror. --Carnildo 18:28, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
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- Fixed. Thanks, good catch.--DocS 19:04, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Note: I removed Windscale as "not civilian" as its primary function as of 1957 was as a source of Pu for nuclear weapons. --DocS 19:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
- I have made some changes to the Windscale entry, including removing a dead link, adding a source and filling in details on the casualty projections. I would still propose moving the entry to the list of military nuclear accidents. --DocS 19:41, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
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- Windscale's a tossup as to where it should be listed. It was a civilian project operated by the government to produce plutonium for military purposes. --Carnildo 20:54, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
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- I am moving Windscale to Military. It's sole purpose was plutonium for bombs. pstudier 23:03, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Now revised and objective?
The specifics that originally caused the article to be marked as anti-nuclear POV appear have now been resolved. Is the article ready for marking as neutral POV now? --Oscarthecat 07:41, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Although there are still a few marginal entries (e.g. Tsuruga 1981, in which the "accident" consists of a short-term violation of company exposure policy), I think the padding has been largely excised, and the POV language is minimal. I have no objection to the NPOV tag being removed. --DocS 04:11, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
- Agreed, and done. Joffan 18:34, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
- Oh yes, and huge kudos to you DocS for your continued work on this. I see you're taking on the corresponding military list! Joffan 18:44, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Marginal Entries
Marginal and misleading entry removed (neither of the sources supported the claim in the entry that the leak had contaminated the river); the contamination was on-site and at levels below EPA safe drinking standards (confirmed by NRC). The other new entry (Haddam 2005) is also marginal, and contained factual errors, but has been left in place (with editing) pending more detalied findings.
It takes a fair bit of work to research and correct shoddy entries. Please research thoroughly (and consider the criteria at the top of the article) before adding to the article. --DocS 22:59, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Mixed tense writing
Is there a specific reason all list entries in this article begin with a present-tense statement? We are dealing with the *past* here, and in many cases the following sentence switches to past tense. I feel each opening verb ought to be changed to past tense to maintain proper grammar and style.
[edit] Grammar and Vocabulary
Could someone please have a look at my entry about the kytschym-catastrophe? I'm not a native English-speaker and I don't want to leave an article with mistakes. Thanks
And maybe it might be useful to oversee other entries as well...
