Talk:Reliable Replacement Warhead

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[edit] Discussion

I tried to edit a very biased article on the RRW program to give it some balance. After a few minutes all of my edits were reversed by Georgewilliamherbert. What's up? I am new to to Wikipedia, but am very offended by the bias in the existing article and do not want it to remain. What options do I have?

Hi. First, you should sign your comments in talk pages using four ~ characters in a row in the text box ( ~~~~); that gives you the standard name/date/timestamp you'll see around.

I reverted your first set of changes, because in my judgement they're unbalanced and not neutral point of view on the subject. You made a second set of changes, and another editor (who I don't know personally) reviewed and reverted independently. I don't know whether they disagreed with your point of view changes or thought it was vandalism or what; they didn't leave an explanatory note in the change history.

It is certainly true that there are critics of the RRW program, who apparently include you, and that the viewpoints represented by those critics are notable in discussing the RRW device and program. However, the changes you made throughout the article were non-encyclopedic and violated wikipedia neutral point of view (see WP:NPOV) standards, in my opinion.

I created a section for criticism of the program and/or design, and put a bit off content and the link you'd included earlier in it. I don't think that's the only criticism that can be said; that was just a start for that section. I expect that you and others will add to it.

Some of the factual claim changes you made elsewhere in the article are contrary to the consensus nuclear engineering beliefs (regarding, for example, Plutonium pit safe lifetimes, explosives aging issues, etc). Bringing them up as beliefs of the RRW critics is fine; changing the main article content to assert that the DOE and other professional nuclear engineering (admittedly non-unanimous) consensus is wrong is a POV issue, in my opinion.

I am interested and open in working with you here. I tried to leave a similar message on your talk page, but my Windows system's latest live update caused an unexpected hang and reboot; you posted here while I was bringing the system back up.

If you want some more editors to review and comment, there are a bunch of people working on various nuclear weapons related articles, who are a mix of vaguely pro-, neutral, and anti-nuclear weapons personal politics. Georgewilliamherbert 19:00, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I registered and now have a name. I am RRW jockey 20:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC). I have reentered my edits to the first paragraph so we can discuss this in pieces. The RRW is by its very nature controversial. To ignore that would be akin to writing an article on Intelligent Design from the standpoint of its proponents, without mentioning until the very end that others view the entire rationale of intelligent design as an attack on Darwinian evolution. If you find my edits to the first paragraph acceptable (or after we can agree on an alternative), I propose that we proceed through the article paragraph by paragraph with me making edits and you responding. (If there is a better way to do that, please let me know -- As I said, I am a novice at this). I will be a little more restrained, especially about the controversial science. However, there is clearly a scientific consensus that the explosives they use in nuclear weapons become more stable over time. The definitive word on Pu lifetime is not in, but the evidence is that the accepted value is increasing to at least 60 years and perhaps well beyond. RRW jockey 20:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that RRW is controversial; the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator was controversial, as it gave a new capability, was talked about as "easier to user" (lower threshold, more likely to be used), etc. RRW is intended to add no new capabilties and to replace other older warheads on a 1:1 basis. There's been roughly a tenth the controversy over RRW compared to RNEW.

Regarding the explosives, I can guarantee you that the long term stability of TATB is a subject of much internal debate. It is thought to be highly stable (under normal temperature conditions, and when the usual Kel-F binder is used (LX-17, PBX-9502). But there are ongoing studies of aging dynamics, the long term effect of both aging and radiation exposure from the fissile materials in the pit, etc. It is not known to be safe and stable for greater than about 40 years.

There has been recent evidence that the newer Pu alloys may last longer than older ones. There were known, documented metallurgical failures of pits from older designs. There has even been one report which claimed that the new alloys / fabrication methods may in fact stabilize or strengthen slowly over time, without becoming brittle. But that is not yet verified by extensive destructive testing of older pits.

All of these are legitimate points of contention, but they're not concluded as known truth. I can't make any assertion as to the likely end result of those investigations, but the underlying answer is that we simply don't know for sure yet, and people disagree about which answer is more likely. In that situation, I feel that the nuclear engineering community consensus (both academic and government nuclear labs) should be given a presumed neutral status within the articles, though dissenting viewpoints both within those communities and from outside are fair additional commentary.

That's my two cents. Georgewilliamherbert 20:37, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm happy with putting in other points of view, and having a section for criticisms. I think that we should try and make sure that all statements and listed facts are attributed to specific people, labs, or reports, though. I don't think we need to bend over backwards to qualify every sentence with "supporters claim" and things of that nature, but I'm happy with attributing anything where the POV of who is claiming it is not obvious. --Fastfission 20:42, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't say anything about the factual veracity of the article, but as it currently stands it looks to my untrained eye like it's reasonably NPOV. Granted, "controversial" is in the eye of the beholder, so if that's still a matter of contention more references about who exactly is taking issue with the matter would help. I've also got a personal distaste for naming a section of an article "criticism", something a little more specific might be good instead, but I'm not going to dive in on that myself. :) (in case anyone's wondering why I popped out of nowhere in this talk page, George asked me to come have a look as an "outside viewer") Bryan 01:53, 4 May 2006 (UTC)