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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 19:39, 6 April 2008.

Hanford Site

[edit]

Self-nomination. Northwesterner1 (talk) 20:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments
All links checked out fine with the tool. Sources look good. Ealdgyth - Talk 20:57, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Issues resolved, - Northwesterner1 (talk) 20:31, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • This article has already received thorough attention from two of the most detail-oriented editors I know. I just read it carefully, and am very impressed with the current version. I do have a few concerns:
    • A paragraph of the lead should be devoted to the current state and use of the site. The present lead almost suggests that nothing is done there at all anymore; the last sentence seems out of place without further detail. Specifically, the presence of the Columbia Generating Station and the inactive B-Reactor should be included in the lead, and maybe the Nat'l Monument.
      done, and quite nicely. -Pete (talk) 20:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • "The reactor went critical in late September and, after overcoming nuclear poisoning, produced its first plutonium on November 6, 1944." To the non-technical reader, this reads as though it's a "bad thing," but I suspect this is actually what was intended. Can it be in a more reader-friendly way?
      done Seems I wasn't quite right, but this could benefit from someone more familiar with the technology. Not enough to hold back from FA. -Pete (talk) 20:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • This strikes me as a particularly notable sentence, perhaps worthy of a quote box: "Until news arrived of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, fewer than one percent of Hanford's workers knew they were working on a nuclear weapons project."
      done -- if there's anything to be done here, it's certainly not required for FA. -Pete (talk) 20:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Examples of the scale of the problem are:" I think this bullet list should be converted to prose, and needn't call itself out as "examples of the scale." If it's written right, the reader will grasp that it reflects the scale without prompting.
      done -- again, nice job. -Pete (talk) 20:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I believe the cleanup efforts are all, or mostly, administered under several Superfund programs. It seems to me that Superfund is a fairly well-known entity, and this should be spelled out in the cleanup section.
      done -- sounds like my understanding was inaccurate. It would be nice to have this stuff spelled out in a little more detail, but not necessary for FA. It's not "major facts and details", so does not violate the "comprehensivness" criterion. -Pete (talk) 20:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • The B-Reactor article has a proposed merge into this article. It would be good if a decision could be made on that before bringing this one to FA, in the interests of stability. (Probably not a huge concern if this does not get done, but it would be good.)
      done -- I'll watch this too, but agree that it will not likely impact this article. -Pete (talk) 20:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

-Pete (talk) 01:59, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for the very helpful comments, Pete.
    • I expanded the last paragraph of the lead regarding current activities and added a link to the Columbia Generating Station. (B-Reactor is already in the first paragraph.)
    • As far as I understand it, the nuclear poisoning was indeed a "bad thing," so the non-technical reader is getting the right impression. This info was in the article before I came along, and I don't know enough about it to improve the wording, unfortunately. The wikilink to nuclear poison helps a little bit but not much. I agree this should be made more clear, but I'm not qualified to do it.
    • I'm not a big fan of quote boxes myself, but of course the article belongs to us all, so I say go for it if you like the idea.
    • I converted the bullets in the last section to prose.
    • I'm not an expert on this, but I think USDOE, not Superfund, pays for most of the Hanford cleanup. It's true that some of the cleanup efforts are funded and regulated under Superfund (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Ac, aka CERCLA). However, there are other regulatory acts in play, including the Resource Convervation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the WA state hazardous waste law. I believe Superfund pays for some of the EPA's activities, but most of the cleanup is managed by the US Department of Energy and funded under the USDOE budget. The largest cleanup challenge (treatment and storage of tank waste) is managed by the USDOE and overseen by the Washington Dept of Ecology under RCRA. In my view, representing Hanford as a "Superfund" site is inaccurate, as there are some pretty key differences between Hanford and other Superfund sites. EPA calls it a Superfund site in some documents, but it's more accurate to think of the cleanup as occuring under the "Tri-Party Agreement," which is a multi-agency, federal-state partnership, with the bulk of the money coming from USDOE.
    • I don't expect the B-reactor merge to go through, so I don't think it will affect stability, but I will post a comment about it and ask for more feedback before removing the merge tag.
Northwesterner1 (talk) 20:02, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. All my concerns were met quickly and thoroughly. The specifics VanTucky noted should be addressed (though I don't know that the ~50 miles figure needs a citation), but I'm confident they will be. I'll do a little searching, but if Google doesn't have these figures I doubt I'll find them. Anyway -- great job! -Pete (talk) 20:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments Overall it looks great, but I marked several sentences that contained exact figures and stats to be cited in Geography, Cold War expansion, and Plutonium production with {{fact}} tags. Please remedy these, and otherwise I'm in support. Thanks for your work so far, VanTucky 19:48, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Taking a quick look at some of these fact tags, several of them have a citation one or two sentences later that covers the previous facts. Do you want a footnote after each sentence, or can one footnote cover several adjacent sentences?Northwesterner1 (talk)`
I would generally say it's better to overcite. It does lead to a "cluttered" look, which is unfortunate, but with evolving articles, adjacent sentences often get split up. To ensure good sourcing going forward, better to attribute every controversial claim and every specific figure that is supported by a text. (On a not-terribly-related note, I'd like to get the formatting changed to eliminate the brackets caused by the ref tag. That would do wonders to reduce the cluttered look of heavily-cited articles.) -Pete (talk) 20:23, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Will do. Northwesterner1 (talk) 20:40, 30 March 2008 (UTC) Done. Northwesterner1 (talk) 19:04, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I was slow in responding. Pete is spot on. Anytime you make a specific claim of exact figures, statistics and measurements (other than the completely obvious) you should have an immediately following citation. Many times this means duplicating references, but it's important that readers see that these numbers are attributed to a specific source. Thanks for your work, VanTucky 19:15, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment
  • Support for an excellently researched and written article. I have a couple of very minor suggestions/questions:
    • roughly equivalent to half the total area of Rhode Island. Should something go before roughly?
    • has been hired to construct the Vit Plant Is Vit Plant and accepted term, or are we being lazy?
    • bellwether trial to test Is it possible to find a link for bellwether? I had to look the meaning up.

Well done. GrahamColmTalk 16:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In response, I wikilinked bellweather and replaced Vit Plant with vitrification plant. Good catches. Not sure about Rhode Island. Finetooth (talk) 17:42, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Overall, a very good article. Some issues I noticed:
  • The relevance of the see also link to Kennewick Man is not made clear within this article. If there is a significant connection, it should show up in the prose; if there isn't one, then there is no need for the see also link.
  • Comment: I think this gets it backwards. Items are not supposed to be included in the "see also" section or template if they are linked within the article. In this case, the reason is simple: there's a good deal more info on the extended human history of the region at the Kennewick Man article. If the reader's confused as to why it's there, all s/he has to do is click on the link, and the reason for the connection will become clear. I don't think the link is necessary for FA but I do think it improves the article, and I'd rather see it restored. -Pete (talk) 17:14, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first part of the "Manhattan Project" section refers to "The contract" being awarded to the Met Lab, but no prior mention of what contract it was referring to. "A contract" might be an acceptable replacement, or the earlier section about interest in plutonium could be reworded to reflect the government's role as a research contractor.
  • Unreferenced sentence at the end of the first paragraph in "Construction begins"
  • "Plutonium processing canyon": this term is introduced several paragraphs before it is explained.
  • From the final paragraph of "Plutonium production": the Trinity bomb was not "dropped".
  • The first sentence from "Scientific innovations" mentions the "compressed time frame of the Manhattan Project". Compressed relative to what?
  • That section is titled "Scientific innovations", but the innovations mentioned are technical innovations, rather than scientific in the traditional sense. This section, which deals with the design of the reactors and refinement process, would also make more sense before the "Plutonium production" section.
  • From "Decommissioning": "radioactivity to decay": Does radioactivity decay? I understand that, mathematically, the level of radioactivity decays as radioactive material undergoes the physical process of radioactive decay, but this phrase seems to conflate the two in this context.
  • That sections mentions historians advocating a B-reactor museum, but none of the people mentioned on the cited website ([1]) are identified as historians.
  • Second paragraph of "Cleanup era" is unreferenced.
  • Fourth paragraph of "Cleanup era" is repetitive with respective to "difficult problem" of dealing with high-level waste. The two sentences that mention it could probably be consolidated.

--ragesoss (talk) 04:12, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for the review. I've addressed most of these points with edits in the article, as noted below; where I disagree, I provide an explanation.
  • In my view, Kennewick Man is not particularly important for this article to note, and I've removed the see also link.
  • I've clarified the contract reference by reversing the order of two sentences and adding the qualifier "research contract."
  • I've added a footnote to the first sentence of the Construction begins section.
  • I believe "plutonium processing canyon" as it first appears in the Construction begins section is sufficiently clear. The reader understands that three very large plutonium-processing facilities were built. That's all the reader really needs to know in a section about site construction. To provide a full explanation at this point would disrupt the narrative and would introduce other problems. The term is explained in more detail in the next section Plutonium production, where we learn what actually happens in the canyons. The alternative is to say something in the first instance like "plutonium-processing buildings," "plutonium-processing facilities," or "chemical separation plants," but I prefer the more precise term and don't believe it places an undue burden on the reader.
  • I've changed the "bomb dropped" wording to "bomb detonated over."
  • I'm not sure how to address your concern about the "compressed time frame" language. All the alternatives I can think of, "short time frame," "accelerated time frame," etc., raise the same question: Short relative to what? I believe the meaning is clear from the context--compressed relative to the time frame that would normally be used for a massive engineering project on this scale--but I welcome specific ideas for fixing this sentence.
  • I've changed "scientific innovations" to "technological innovations." I have left the section where it is, below Plutonium production, as in fact several of the innovations listed here occured after the nuclear facilities were operational and plutonium was first produced. In the early years of the site, the construction, production, and technology were all mixed up; they figured things out as they went along. Sometimes the technology was in place before the production, sometimes in the middle, sometimes afterward. I think this section works best where it is.
  • I've changed "radioactivity to decay" to "radioactive materials to decay." Good catch.
  • I've added a second footnote to the B Reactor museum sentence that references specific historians involved in the effort.
  • I've added a footnote to the second paragraph of Cleanup era.
  • I've consolidated the repetitive sentences you noted in the fourth paragraph of Cleanup era.
Northwesterner1 (talk) 10:26, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Great! Regarding compressed vs. short vs. accelerated time frame, I think short is the best option. The other two are action words that imply a previous uncompressed or unaccelerated state. I don't think it's fair to assume anything about the 'normal' time frame for a project like this, since the scale of coordinated effort in the Manhattan Project was unprecedented. Support. [note: that !vote was from ragesoss. -Pete (talk) 18:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)][reply]

Support—good stuff indeed.

Thanks for the support. The radioactive waste is mixed solid and liquid waste. I've seen it quoted in scientific articles as cubic metres, and I assumed that was because of the solid component, although it may also be quoted sometimes in litres. I've always seen the US measurement quoted as gallons. I'm American, and unfortunately I'm a bit ignorant on the finer points of the metric system. I'll defer to others. I share your concern about "Construction begins," but it was the best I could come up with. "Construction" doesn't work because the site facilities were built over so many years (and in fact the vitrification plant is a big construction project today). The nuclear reactors themselves were built over a period of decades. Only the first three were built in the WWII period discussed in that section. I thought about "Early construction" but decided in the end that "Construction begins" was the best. I'm open to changes.Northwesterner1 (talk) 12:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Notes: numerous little glitches that need attention before promotion, see my edit summaries, and I removed an external jump from the text that apparently no one caught. I found several errors in the citations and missing publishers; all sources need publishers. Also, pls review Wikipedia:MOS#Bulleted_and_numbered_lists for punctuation on bullet lists (they may be correct, I'm not certain). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for looking it over. I will double-check the publishers as well as the punctuation for bullet lists. However, I would like to restore the external jump you moved. WP:EL says, "External links should not normally be used in the body of an article. Instead, include them in an "External links" section at the end or in the appropriate location within an infobox or navbox." The link was in a photo caption, which is not the body of the article. It's rather more like an infobox. Further, WP:EL is a style guideline that should be treated with the occasional exception. Linking to a virtual tour in the caption with the map is extremely useful, much more so than providing a link in the external links section. As the link is within parens and within the caption box, it is clearly set aside as peripheral material and does not interfere with the flow of the body of the article. You assume that apparently no other editors caught it, but it's very possible they saw it and liked it. Please reconsider. Northwesterner1 (talk) 17:22, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see Pete's beat me to it on the ref formatting. Thanks, Pete! Northwesterner1 (talk) 17:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) I disagree with external links in these situations, but I won't object or hold up the FAC if you reinstate it (yes, it's only a guideline). Please do finish reviewing the citations, and check whether the bulleted lists are punctuated correctly (I'm not certain). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:26, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reviewing the links, it looks like most of the "missing publisher" problems are just inconsistent formatting: using the "last" field instead of "publisher" in {{cite web}}, for instance. Potential larger issues with refs. 22, 30, and 53. Any others I should be looking at closely? -Pete (talk) 17:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, I did check WP:MOS, and made a couple tweaks to the two bullet lists to bring their punctuation into compliance. -Pete (talk) 17:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also 37; problem is, when you see that many on a spotcheck, you may need to run through all of them. I think the bullet lists are OK now, but I find the MoS wording a bit unclear, so will leave it to you :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:33, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, I'm confused on that one. Seems clear to me that the City of Richland is the publisher, the formatting may be incorrect but I think all the information is there. What deeper problem do you see with ref. 37? -Pete (talk) 17:37, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, I can confirm NWer's theory in my case…I noticed that unusual EL a long time ago, and thought it was appropriate in this case. Still think so. This article has had a lot of eyes on it since that was added, so I think it's safe to leave it that way. -Pete (talk) 17:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<outdent>The NRHP dead link looks like a temporary server problem rather than a problem with this particular link. I've tried to log on just now from other articles with NRHP links, and they don't work either. Finetooth (talk) 18:43, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thought so, but I can't resolve the contradiction in the date (was it 1992 or 1996)? And the source needs a lastaccessdate. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:49, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's back online now, so I'll try to check the specifics and slap an accessdate on there. The page says that it frequently gets overloaded, and an upgrade is planned. Anyway -- am I correct in saying that attention to refs. 16 and 38 for this issue, and 22, 30, and 53 for publisher issues, are what remain of you concerns, SG? Anything else? -Pete (talk) 18:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Meanwhile, I got on, checked the date, 1992, and it's correct. I added the access date while I was doing that. The source does not seem to confirm the "NRHP site 92000245" part of the citation, or I'm just not seeing it. Did that come from elsewhere? Finetooth (talk) 19:01, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The number's not without basis, it refers to the site at the apparently independent site [2]. I'd say it stands to reason that number originates with the NHRP program, though I can't prove it. (Hard to imagine an independent organization implementing an extensive system of unique identifiers on its own.) -Pete (talk) 19:06, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's everything, although we edit conflicted a few times, so I hope we didn't get anything crossed up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:15, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, everyone, for the help. I will go back through the changes and try to see if anything went buggy due to edit conflicts. I will also add the page Pete found as a second citation for the NRHP footnotes. Northwesterner1 (talk) 19:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Pete is right about the number. When I finally clicked on "State and Name with Database Details" at the NRHP site, it returned the number, which is 92000245. It's necessary to do two searches to find all of the details in the citation, but I think that's OK. Finetooth (talk) 19:36, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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