Talk:Nuclear power/Archive 11

message: Ultramarine, do you think it's 'your' Article? It's not 'unsourced original research', that's a plea. Deletions without discussion can as easily be reinserted.
:Read Wikipedia:No original research. Not allowed in Wikipedia.Ultramarine 09:22, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of Comparison by Ultramarine 

message: I removed the following section added by Mhollinshead:
  ==Pros and Cons of Nuclear Power==
===The Pros===
Little Pollution
*It’s lengthy
*More fuel is produced
*It helps out in Ozone protection
Reliability
*It’s less vulnerable to shortages, due to strikes or natural disasters
*It’s evenly deposited around the globe
*It lowers Radon exposures
===The Cons===
Meltdowns
*If coolant water is lost in a fission reactor, Uranium fuel pellets would overheat and dissolve, leaving the fuel dissolved
*In disasters, such as Three Mile Island, workers failed to supply coolant to the core
*Meltdowns eventually led to radiation exposure
Radiation
*At least 200 rems of radiation doses cause radiation sickness, if it’s received all at once
*Out of the 100,000 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing survivors, there have been 400 more cancer deaths than normal, without an above average genetic disease rate in children
Waste Disposal
*Uranium – 235 fissions remains radioactive for Millenniums
*Many nuclear waste sites have been built, but it’s tough to store it
===The Good and Bad of the Safety in Nuclear Energy===
The Good
*No Americans have died or have been seriously wounded from a nuclear reaction accident
*There are more safety mechanisms, which greatly lowers the chance of any reactor accident
*A series of barriers separate the radiation and heat of the reactor core from the outside
The Bad
*It could leak, due to an increase in humidity and radiation
*Humans are easily exposed to the radiation
*It can be disastrous
 
on the grounds that it was contentious, simplistic and redundant. There may be a case for a summarizing section however; any ideas? Joffan 17:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Pros and Cons"

message: # It's doesn't produce aerosol pollution ie like coal dust.
# It's carbon neutral - so no Global Warming
# Very high Energy density (low power density)
# Medical risks to humans associated with radiation
# Challenges of storage
# Scarcity of (safer) fuel
# Widely perceived potential for WMD weaponization.
Cutting to the History without first providing a cliff-notes summation appears unencyclopedic. Benjamin Gatti 20:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking at other energy sources, such as Natural gas, Coal, or Renewable energy, there is no cliff-notes summary. They are all positively biased, not mentioning most controversies.Ultramarine 22:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Coal intro includes: as well as the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, which is believed to be the primary cause of global warming.  It could go farther, but still, that is the essential problem with coal (that and breathing it kills children according to the NC Ag, and EPA). Benjamin Gatti 22:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Coal intro mentions none of the many other problems with coal, like causing various diseases and many deaths, problem with storing the ashes, acid rain, and so on. The natural gas intro not even global warming. The renewable energy intro has only positive things to say.Ultramarine 23:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The current Intro is good - perhaps it could mention that there are advantages and controversy and see below.  However, there is no Advantages section! (one would fit nicely above the huge Concerns section).  But I agree that any reasonable summation of the pros and cons would still be far too large for the Intro. Simesa 23:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction fails to introduce and the importance qualities and distinctions  of nuclear power 

message: Is there any reason why the results of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology's 2006 report  which showed that the life cycle CO2 emissions were comparable to, or less than, that of wind power, should be regarded with suspicion? Cheers, Tompsci 00:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Any summary is subject to question, but suspicion? The report indicates that most of the CO2 from wind is from maintenance vehicles, which of course could be reduced to zero by using electric vehicles. Nuclear puts out an awful lot of power from a small facility. However I suspect that you could find other studies that showed results ten or twenty times as high as those given. 199.125.109.127 03:35, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  2006 POSTnote 

message: I stumbled upon this graph: , which is an interesting comparison of money invested by the US government for different types of energy sources.  It's useful in the context that people accuse nuclear of being subsidized by disproportionate government spending into research (yeah, how good is this claim with no numbers?).  But the second thing interesting is the recent increase in funding for nuclear and other power sources, which would be useful for a Nuclear renaissance article that I want to build. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 00:35, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The chart does not go back far enough.  Much of the nuclear spending occured earlier, including the billions spent on developing nuclear weapons.  See the steady decline in nuclear spending at the beginning of the chart? 199.125.109.58 17:47, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't intend to argue with you, but there is spending for fossil fuels and renewables on that chart too.  Nuclear never received any funding disproportionate to what it was giving back like solar or wind power :) -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 15:57, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure it did.  Wind is particularly cheap to install, about $1/watt.  While solar was expensive thirty years ago there was very little invested compared to what was spent on nuclear.  It is expected that solar will be down to $0.80/watt in a few years giving a rapid return on investment. Nuclear never breaks even because you have to contain the waste practically forever. Nuclear is entwined with nuclear weapons development as well, so it is hard to separate the two. 199.125.109.58 03:09, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be great to get the raw data and try to expand that graph all the way back through the DOE's successor organizations. I was once able to get some pretty detailed funding data from the DOE in relation to their sponsorship of physics (all the way back to 1960); maybe I'll try to see if I can get them to give me some of that data. --Panoptik 19:59, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Uh, modern nuclear plants are expected to cost about 1.4$ per watt.  The only difference is that that watt of nuclear you pay for delivers on average 90% of its capacity compared to 10% or whatever it is for wind.  Anyway, that would be great if we could get data that went back further as well, but the fact that information doesn't support your preconceived winner doesn't warrant disregarding it. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 03:02, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, extremely high amounts of government funding of reactor development did occur in the 1950s and 1960s, and they explicitly turned a lot of that over to industry after that, so to not have that data does lead for a misleading graph, if it is meant to give a real sense about what sort of research investment the government has put into any given technology. I mean, the entire deal with the economics of nuclear plants is that they require immense capital investments, so that's pretty important if you're going to imply anything about the overall cost.  What warrants disregarding the data, if one is going to do that, is if it is likely to be misleading because of its sampling, which I suppose is what is being alleged here. --Panoptik 15:08, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Like I said, it would be great to have more data going further back, but right now we don't have any information that could be plotted and added (it wouldn't even go in this article since we have Nuclear power in the United States).  But if you did go back that far, I'm sure it would decrease because no reputable organization would count nuclear weapons spending as spending for nuclear power. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 17:26, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

text: On the other hand does any reputable organization count Iran's nuclear power investment as spending for nuclear weapons? The infrastructure for mining and processing uranium, and the construction of a reactor are imperceptibly different from a nuclear weapons program. 199.125.109.64 03:40, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Interesting graph

message: But just so that someone doesn't try to undo my undo of untrue material:
This reference:What's Wrong With the NRC's 2004 Fact Sheet on the TMI Accident was used to say that radiation releases were unmonitored after the accident, which it doesn't say at all.  It mentioned something about NRC not monitoring radiation in some capacity, which was unrelated to the accident.
This:
However, the NRC no longer monitors radiation around nuclear reactors despite incidents where citizen groups have measured releases of radiation including one of 15 times background radiation.Nuclear power watchdogs
Is even acknowledged on it's own site that it's disputed.  If a nuclear plant EVER released enough radiation to be statistically significant against background, it would be a giant event (worse than TMI).
The rest was so ridiculous that I don't need to support my revert. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 07:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So sorry, but you are beating a dead horse by trying to make an encyclopedia article into a brochure on nuclear power. 199.125.109.73 18:15, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But that's pretty much what we want - a reliable, balanced, extremely detailed write-up. Simesa 18:22, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: I apologize in advance for feeding the troll

message: Does anyone know why so many of the other languages were removed? 199.125.109.108 20:23, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought that looked wrong actually.  It probably has to do with nuclear energy and nuclear power distinction, but I'd say they probably need to be restored. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 05:18, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's pretty clear that is what happened, and ironically there are links from both nuclear power and nuclear energy to the same ml article. Links have been restored. And the one from nuclear energy deleted. It also looks like some of the language links can be updated to better links. And the nuclear energy article needs to be flushed out. There is a ton more information on the other language articles than there is on the English article. 199.125.109.36 17:58, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Other languages

message: Nuclear power is not about a little electric power for a lot of people.
It's about a lot of political energy for a few. When it produces plutonium,
and it always does, the choice becomes using it or losing it very carefully.
BrewJay 06:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Politics of Containment 

message: Can I go anywhere without seeing inadequate leads? One brief paragraph is a terrible thing to have introducing an article this long. There's no way an article should be given an A class when the lead is so poor. Richard001 07:56, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, that does totally suck. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 23:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Move it back to B while that is sorted out? 199.125.109.108 02:51, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Honestly... an A vs. B rating don't matter. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 04:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then B it is. 199.125.109.47 15:27, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Lead

message: In the image "Status of nuclear power globally", Canada needs to be changed to 'considering new plants'. Energy Alberta has applied to build two reactors near Peace River, Alberta. 
Also, would someone please be kind enough to direct me to where I can find out how to change images myself. Nailedtooth 23:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The image is here, which is the Wikipedia Commons.  You'll need to register an account there, and then you can upload a new revision.  I had just revised it myself by changing the USA from "stable" to "considering new plants" (duh, the US has license applications started).  Shortly afterwards, another user changed Canada and Mexico to blue.  I guess all of north America being gold doesn't look very visually appealing, but I wouldn't try to change the status because of that :-P -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 03:26, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

text: That's not quite the right way to change the picture. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 22:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not my first choice either. I can't overwrite pictures with my 'new' commons account so, as per the suggestion on the commons page, I uploaded with a new file name. Yes, It will have to be corrected, but works for the time being. Nailedtooth 23:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image: status of nuclear power globally 

message: The two sections on nuclear fusion have been moved to the nuclear fusion article. I would say that the four remaining references are ample coverage in this article, especially with the link at the top of the page. 199.125.109.108 23:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for that, 199.125.109.108.  Fusion is not what is currently understood as "Nuclear Power" to most of the public, and if they ever get it to work, it has different strengths and weaknesses.  I considered changing the whole article's title to "Fission Power", but I suspect that'd just make everyone mad. Wikisteff 02:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Nuclear fusion

message: this image is as relevant to reality as comparing,the total energy our sun sends us each minute. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.82.47.118 (talk)  at 03:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  U for millenia 

message: I've been having some trouble in regards to my references 8-12. I will fix it tomorrow, but what's strange is a completely similar reference I inserted (7) is coming out fine. If anyone can lend a hand while I sleep, it would be great.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cronos2546 (talk • contribs) 04:49, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem with references in history section

message: I believe this section is preventing the article for handling the information in an approprate fashion.  It's ridiculous that
# We have a debate section that takes up around half the article
# It's silly that we have sections like "accidents" in the debate section that don't exist as a section on their own.
I say delete it.  All the parts of the debate section should exist on their own and should not contain sentences at all like "supporters argue...".  If we're going to have opinions with supporting information with them - then delete the opinion, leave the supporting information. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 21:36, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of the sections under debate don't seem to be about a debate, and there are articles on many of the topics which could probably be summarized better.  (SEWilco 02:56, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, I'll try to make further organizational contributions later. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 07:06, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal for "debate" section

message: I know people have bickered and fought about this before, so I think I should explain what I did.  Firstly, I found the image of Susquehanna was insufficient for these reasons:
#PD images are nice to have, that's all.  They should never be preferred over genuine user created media, and epically when it's
#low resolution.
#Also, BWRs are worldwide a smaller share than the (literal) majority PWRs.
#Furthermore, the use of cooling towers is the majority case, but there a large fraction of plants out there don't have them (even though most people don't know this).
So given these reasons, I think it would be best to show the majority and minority case in both respects. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 07:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro image explanation 

message: Ignorant Right-wingers had better stop messing with all my commentary in this article  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.227.151.150 (talk) 21:16, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You researched it? Please see WP:OR. Gscshoyru 21:29, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And speel chqed theem to. 199.125.109.36 22:28, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  My posts are perfectly accourate and meticulously researched 

message: i RESEARCH MY INFORMATION BETTER THAT dAN rATHER.Quit messing with my accurate commentary
:Please see keyboard and how to spell.  Happy editing! -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 06:36, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Right wing lunatics should get off my cloud 

message: Ignorant right wingers no longer dominate this article  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.197.96.125 (talk) 16:57, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see WP:NPA and remember to sign your posts, if you want to be taken seriously as an editor. --LeyteWolfer 16:59, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Checking changes since my last change, it would seem that you got this article semi-protected.  Why don't you take a break to pat yourself on the back in light of all the contributions you've made to human knowledge? -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 01:03, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I have improved the debate and safety sections 

message: Why don we call paragraph "Safety" "Risk" instead? I read for my university a paper about the (GMO) industry publishing "safety assessments" when they are required to make risk assessments, because "safety assessment" sounds so much nicer. But then it can never be asserted that anything is 100% safe, where the size of risk can be (reasonable) assessed. Also, when one reads the para, it is mostly about risks of nuclear power, and not about the safety.
--85.27.49.134 (talk) 17:06, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you have a good point in your concern about loaded language and I don't think there's a person here who would fault you for it. However, I have to disagree with your suggestion. You seem to provide your own answer if you think about what your professor said in general terms rather than applied only to GMOs. If you look around you will find most risky things - not just GMOs and nuclear power - classify their risks under 'safety'. Sports pads aren't "risk equipment". Cars aren't given a "five star risk rating". Airlines don't have a good or bad "risk record". It's not that we aren't taking about risk when we talk about nuclear safety, it's that risk is generally talked about as a safety issue regardless of the subject. It is an understood, unwritten convention that "safety issues" have to do with risk. In that light changing "safety" to "risk", by going against the normal convention, would make the article harder to use and may introduce bias. Nailedtooth (talk) 18:24, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''Risk'' instead of ''safety''? 

message: There are two paragraphs that someone keeps bringing in from the fusion article. They have no place in this article and should be deleted. They are "Fusion energy makes nuclear waste of a type that must be stored and could be reused after some 100 years, not the tens of thousands of years of fission waste." And "Fusion power commonly propose the use of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, as fuel and in many current designs also lithium. Assuming a fusion energy output equal to the current global output and that this does not increase in the future, then the known current lithium reserves would last 3000 years, lithium from sea water would last 60 million years, and a more complicated fusion process using only deuterium from sea water would have fuel for 150 billion years." 199.125.109.36 (talk) 04:18, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The discussion about "too cheap to meter" is irrelevant to the fusion issue.  Unless the article is moved to fission power, at minimum, a short contrast to fusion power is absolutely necessary. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 01:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fusion article 

message: I will revert any edits to my accurate information which was well researched  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Togokill (talk • contribs) 01:39, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ignorant right wingers should not mess wit accurate commentary 

message: The vandalism of User: Layla27 and his associated sockpuppets is getting quite old.  Is there any stronger action that we can take to prevent him from disrupting articles on nuclear energy? Lwnf360 05:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism

message: What, exactly, is lacking from this article that would prevent it from being a WP:GA? Lwnf360 10:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The two most obvious points are 1. that it is written like a brochure for the nuclear power industry, not like an encyclopedia article, and 2. the lead section needs to have two more paragraphs added to properly summarize the article. 199.125.109.47 (talk) 22:41, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It does need a better lead.  And if there's something you find POV please feel free to point it out, as I don't that's currently an issue. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 01:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good article nomination