Talk:Anti-nuclear movement in the United States/Archive 1

Archive 1

Subject matter

I rearranged the article in the way I did because it really does not address the simple issue of Anti-nuclear movement in the United States. For this article to work, history of the movement is needed with significant figures, events, and everything in context.

Currently the article is incredibly far from that, and in the interest of propriety I recommend that if these goals cannot be attained that this just be moved to the anti-nuclear movement article. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:21, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Anphibian, yes it does seem to be expanded now... regards, Johnfos (talk) 02:35, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Rewording or reference needed

"Compared with other countries, the US has the most reactors and generates the most electricity from nuclear energy" - I think this line needs either citation or rewording. As mentioned in the Nuclear power article, "The United States produces the most nuclear energy, with nuclear power providing 19% of the electricity it consumes, while France produces the highest percentage of its electrical energy from nuclear reactors—78% as of 2006." When saying 'compared to other countries,' one would imply countries are being compared equally. Jrclark (talk) 11:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Johnfos (talk) 00:44, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Tightening

I'm somewhat surprised at the writing of this article. I'd have expected starting by explaing what the movement was composed of, and not duplicating the list which is treated in detail later in the article.

Also, I'm concerned that the most recent date mentioned appears to be 1989 -- it begs the question as to what the movement has been doing or accomplishing in the 19 years since then.

Finally, no mention is made of the recent nuclear renaissance. With 35 new plants planned, where is the new opposition? Surely some mention should have been made of the renaissance. Simesa (talk) 11:22, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The reason no one has written what you suggest is because the anti-nuclear power movement is petering out. There are still a good number of nostalgic old soldiers (Bonnie Raitt) and dogmatic politicos (Nancy Pelosi, John Edwards, Joe Romm) who still kick and scream about nukes. However, a large number of former opponents have done their homework and recognize that nuclear power is safe (no U.S. deaths ever) and cheap (then and now), and that the only way to abate GHG emissions to the maximum extent is by increasing nuclear's share of the total energy fuel mix. If our political leaders are truly serious about climate protection, they will drive the expansion of nuclear power; this path is inevitable. Until they do so, they are not really serious about climate.Jrgilb (talk) 03:57, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

That's simply false. There is a small minority of the high profile environmentalists who became "nuclear converts", most with questionable conflicts of interest. However every major environmental organisation which historically was opposed to nuclear power is still opposed to nuclear power, as are almost all of their members. The social movement probably shrunk because nuclear power literally died in the United States. It was probably hard to protest against a nuclear industry in the 90s when a plant hadn't been started for decades with no sign of anything changing soon. The battle was seemingly won at that point.

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Split article?

This article is already quite long and there are more groups to add. I would suggest that the "Specific groups" section be split out into a new article, Anti-nuclear groups in the United States, and a summary could be left here. Comments? Johnfos (talk) 20:12, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Done. Johnfos (talk) 01:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Removal of Walker quote

This blockquote by Walker (2004) has been replaced by the text below it:

"In the early 1970s, a highly contentious controversy over the performance of emergency core cooling systems in nuclear plants, designed to prevent a core meltdown that could lead to the "China syndrome", received coverage in the popular media as well as in technical journals."

"In the early 1970s a contentious controversy developed over the performance of emergency core cooling systems in nuclear power plants, designed to prevent a core meltdown. The often popularly sited China syndrome was discussed in the popular media; however this and many other 'potential accidents' are completely mythical and have no scientific foundation."

I'm concerned about undiscussed removal of the cited blockquote. And where does this statement come from: "this and many other 'potential accidents' are completely mythical and have no scientific foundation." Please discuss. Johnfos (talk) 04:58, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, no discussion as yet, so I'll restore the Walker quote for now. Johnfos (talk) 00:53, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Criticism

It would be useful to include more criticism of the Anti-nuclear movement in the US, and the stances of specific people and groups, that is supported by reliable sources. So far I can only find criticism in blogs. Johnfos (talk) 01:09, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

A new Criticism section was just added. This probably improves the article. Patrick Moore`s opinion is certainly prominent, and now it is in the article. However, I would suggest a new ref for this sentence, "Advanced reactor designs are estimated to be much cheaper to operate, and generate less than 1% the amount of waste as current designs." The two refs given for this are to WP nuclear reactor entries (pebble bed and integral fast), but they really should be to outside sources. My two cents, Jack B108 (talk) 00:10, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

oops! sorry, I didn`t mean to echo what was already written today. I didnt see the "New Criticism" section just made here. Jack B108 (talk) 00:14, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Article published

I happened to notice that a version of this article (and some other WP articles) are contained in Anti-Nuclear Movement in the United States (Paperback) by Alphascript Publishing, 28 Oct 2009, ISBN 6130096178 -- Johnfos (talk) 21:41, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes

Thanks for your contributions FellGleaming. I appreciate that you are trying to bring more balance to the article, but the content still needs to be relevant to the topic "Anti-nuclear movement in the United States". Obvious areas where a more expanded pro-nuclear perspective is needed is in the Recent developments section and in regard to any criticism of the anti-nuclear movement in the United States. And the anti-nuclear weapons side of things needs to be expanded.

1. Please make sure that you do not remove sourced information and citations from the article when you are making your edits, see [1]; where there are different figures for a particular event, both should be put in, so the text on TMI now becomes:

The World Nuclear Association has stated that cleanup of the damaged nuclear reactor system at TMI-2 took nearly 12 years and cost approximately US$973 million. Benjamin K. Sovacool, in his 2007 preliminary assessment of major energy accidents, estimated that the TMI accident caused a total of $2.4 billion in property damages. The health effects of the Three Mile Island accident are widely, but not universally, agreed to be very low level.

2. I've looked again at the historical "Emergence of the anti-nuclear power movement" section, and the issue of radiation from coal-fired power plants, and it just wasn't part of the radiation debate that was happening in the seventies. It wasn't "pointed out" at all from what I can see in the Walker book, so I have removed this sentence, and as I've suggested you might like to try Environmental concerns with electricity generation:

However, other scientists pointed out that coal-fired power plants release substantially more radiation into the environment than do nuclear ones, due to the uranium and other radioactive elements found naturally within coal ash.

If you find a source that says it was part of the seventies radiation debate add it back in. But I think the debate was really about the Linear no-threshold model.

-- Johnfos (talk) 22:16, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

New Criticism section

Thanks for adding the criticism section. It is a good start, though I think it could focus on the US more. I have moved it down towards the end of the article to where Criticism sections usually appear. I expect I will do some copyediting of it when I get time. With regard to citations, please include full citation details (author, title, etc) not just a bare URLs, and avoid citing other WP pages -- just use wikilinks. Johnfos (talk) 22:52, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

(moved from above) A new Criticism section was just added. This probably improves the article. Patrick Moore`s opinion is certainly prominent, and now it is in the article. However, I would suggest a new ref for this sentence, "Advanced reactor designs are estimated to be much cheaper to operate, and generate less than 1% the amount of waste as current designs." The two refs given for this are to WP nuclear reactor entries (pebble bed and integral fast), but they really should be to outside sources. My two cents, Jack B108 (talk) 00:10, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Good points Jack; I'll dig up some sources for this.FellGleaming (talk) 22:06, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Romm not a Scientist

He's been a blogger, a policy bureaucrat, and an author-- but he's never done any research, despite his degree in physics. It is incorrect to list him as a scientist.FellGleaming (talk) 02:04, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Fine. Johnfos (talk) 05:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Split

I think this article should be split between anti-weapon groups and anti-power groups.

Rationale: I don't think you'll find a whole lot of people who are not anti-nuclear-weapon, and movements like the Plowshares group, as codified in their name (swords into plowshares), require nuclear power to exist, as it's the only way to destroy nuclear weapons material. I also think that the presence of anti-weapon groups on this list lends a perception of credibility to the anti-power groups they would otherwise not have.

It would take a lot of editorial skill, not to mention time and effort, to successfully do such a split. Given the connections which are often made between nuclear power and nuclear weapons we would need some compelling reasons for making such a split. If you want to explain the Plowshares position more, I would have thought that you could simply add a sentence and source at Plowshares Movement. As to the issue of credibility I really wonder if splitting the article would make any difference with that. Johnfos (talk) 22:04, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I also see no compelling reason to split this article. In fact, I think it be detrimental, at this point. I agree with Johnfos regarding credibility, too. Jack B108 (talk) 01:24, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Joe Romm

Romm was not Deputy Directory of the DOE. He was a deputy assistant secretary, and his responsibilities included policy matters only. He has never actively conducted research, and portraying him as a scientist in a nuclear power article is misleading. Fell Gleaming^talk 02:45, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

EDIT: Joe, I don't know why chose to fork this discussion into Romm's main entry, but to answer your points from there:

"if [he] cannot occasionally be termed a "scientist" on WP, then who can? " Easy. Someone who does research, or least has done research. There are plenty of secretaries who work for the "advanced R&D agency" that is the DOE. But they don't perform advanced R&D, and neither did Romm. Today, he's a blogger. Remember, the intention in articles is not to mislead the reader. Romm has never worked as a scientist. Your statements about Einstein are off the mark, given his research, contributions, and the vast impact of the peer-reviewed papers he published. Romm, however, has never done research, never published a scientific paper, and most importantly of all, never worked in a position where he might have done so. Finally, I note that this is not "a science entry". It's an entry about about a political organization. And since you choose to ridicule me, I have to state that, while I specifically refuse to disclose my qualifications, I am more qualified to be called a scientist in a nuclear power capacity than is Romm. That is neither here nor there, no. Please confine the discussion to the points at hand. Fell Gleaming^talk 03:21, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Fell Gleaming is mistaken about Romm's background. Romm's responsibilities at the DOE were to supervise the Department's billion-dollar research and development programs on energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. Romm was involved in the fight against nuclear proliferation and for many years has written about the nuclear energy industry. In 2008, he wrote this Report: "The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power" AmericanProgressAction.org. Here is Romm's biography at The Foundation for Nuclear Studies. Romm has been invited many times to testify before the Congressional committees on science and technology, and he is author of a book Hell and High Water that explains, in extensive detail, the scientific understanding of climate change. After the DOE, Romm spent several years advising foundations and companies on energy technologies, writing books on the subject. As I've pointed out to Fell Gleaming before, and among other scientific credentials discussed in Romm's article, Romm was Principal Investigator of the NSF study; he has written a number of books on energy and global warming, as well as scientific reports; and he was elected as a Fellow of the AAAS in December 2008 for "distinguished service toward a sustainable energy future and for persuasive discourse on why citizens, corporations, and governments should adopt sustainable technologies." All of this is set forth in this article: Joseph J. Romm.

Here are some publications and organizations that call Romm a "physicist":

• Scientific American calls him a physicist here.
• The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman, calls Romm a "physicist and climate expert" here and here and in his recent book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded Farrar, Strauß and Giroux, Macmillan, 2008, pp. 115, 160 and 188 ISBN 0374166854. I think it is fair to quote Friedman in order to characterize Romm.
• The Wall Street Journal calls him a physicist here.
• The Washington Post calls him a physicist here.
• The New York Times states, in December 2009, that Romm is a physicist here.
• PBS calls him a physicist here.
• U.S News & World Report introduces Romm as a "physicist and climate expert".
• Newsweek calls him a physicist here.
• The Boston Globe calls Romm a physicist.
• Andrew Revkin of The New York Times call Romm a physicist.
• San Francisco Chronicle calls Romm a physicist.
• The New Yorker calls Romm a physicist.
• The National Wildlife Federation calls Romm a physicist
• TreeHugger calls him a physicist here.
• WNYC's "On the Media" calls him a physicist here.
• Physics World calls him a "physicist and climate expert" here.

Here are some other publications and organizations that call Romm a "scientist" or "climate expert":

• The Sydney Morning Herald calls Romm a scientist.
• Scientific American calls him a climate expert here.
• U.S. News & World Report calls Romm "an oft-cited expert on climate change issues, and a go-to witness at congressional hearings".
• The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies calls Romm a climate change expert here.
• Toronto Star: Romm is "widely recognized as a climate change and clean technology expert". See this.
• The American Spectator calls him "a giant among environmental experts".

I could keep adding more. There are thousands of google hits on Romm and the words scientist, physicist, climate expert, energy expert, etc. because Romm is a leading expert on the science and technology of climate and energy. -- Ssilvers (talk) 06:19, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Writing books makes one an author. Supervising funding makes one a manager. Posting online essays makes one a blogger. Romm is admittedly all three. I also don't quibble over the term "climate expert". He has not, however, performed research or authored scientific papers. This is why most sources specifically do not refer to him as a scientist, as your above list demonstrates. You've proven quite clearly that Romm is not normally referred to as a scientist. Of course, there's always a lazy or ill-informed journalist in the bunch to make a mistake. Nor are all physicists scientists ... in fact the vast majority of them are not. For someone outside the field of physics, this may be difficult to understand, but it may help you to consider the case of an industrial food chemist (who will almost certainly not be be a scientist) versus a research chemist (who almost certainly will be).

By the way, I note with amusement your careful phrasing of some of those links, such as the US News report that actually calls Romm an "influential liberal climate change expert and blogger". Fell Gleaming^talk 11:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Finally, I ask Ssilver to disclose the fact that he has a close personal relationship with Romm, as is required by Wikipedia policy. Fell Gleaming^talk 11:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

"Scientists and Engineers"

I'm rather surprised by the recents reverts, given what JohnFos calls "unflattering labels" about people are the labels already in their current Wiki entries. Nor is Romm a scientist, as the consensus reached on his own talk page concluded. A scientist is someone who performs science, i.e. research. Romm does not, and never has. Further, in a discussion on nuclear power, it is highly misleading to label a biologist a "scientist". We use specific terms, as to not intentionally lead the reader astray. Fell Gleaming^talk 23:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The consensus here so far is that the list of scientists and engineers given in the lead is ok. I believe Romm is a scientist because he is a Fellow of the AAAS. But I have now expanded the description of him in the body of the article, see [2]. Hope this helps. Johnfos (talk) 00:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The larger issue is the misleading "scientists and engineers" for a group that includes people such as biologists, activists, and environmentalists. You haven't actually stated your specific objection, othre than that you find the labels "unflattering". You may find them so, but they are already accepted as being the best description of those individuals as indicated by their WP entries. The current text is obviously attempting an appeal to authority, by implying that "scientists" have some special knowledge about nuclear power that mere mortals do not. If the material cannot be covered without misleading the reader, it doesn't need to be in the lede at all. Fell Gleaming^talk 02:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, I can't believe what has happened here. Fell, you first raised the issue about Romm back in April and I tried to go along with you, until I realised he was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And even though we have different views, I've tried to be as accommodating as I can since then. But still you have unilaterally pursued and escalated the issue. There is clearly something not right here. Johnfos (talk) 08:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Removal of well sourced balancing material

Johnfos, do you mind explaining edits like this [3]? NPOV requires all sides of an argument to be covered, and not simply use the article for soapboxing. The SYN objection is spurious, of course. The use of the MIT source implies nothing except specifically what it states -- that nuclear reactor construction times are closer to five years, rather than ten. How do you justify scrubbing from the article any and all contrary opinion? Fell Gleaming^talk 02:19, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

This edit [4] is problematic also. The stated justification is that the article is about the "US" anti-nuclear movement. However, the US movement is composed of people, who can and do make statements and have opinions about the world nuclear situation. What makes it more difficult to WP:AGF about your edit, however, is the fact you yourself added the material about Al Gore's views on worldwide nuclear power [5], and though you've made many dozens of edits in the year since you added it, you had no problem -- until his inaccurate statement was countered. Can you explain this behaviour?

I wish to seek mediation for this article. Do you agree? Fell Gleaming^talk 02:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I've honestly tried to accommodate you as much as I can, and it was me who originally suggested a Criticism section be added to this article, see [6] -- which you eventually did and I thought that was fine. But now much of what you are trying to add isn't about the anti-nuclear movement in the US, and is WP:Coatrack material, and the negative (unflattering) characterisation of people is POV. Anyway, I think I will just step back, take a break from editing this article, and see what unfolds. I feel that this is the most helpful thing I can do at this stage. Johnfos (talk) 08:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

John, I really don't understand how calling a biologist a biologist rather than the vague and inaccurate "scientist and engineer" is unflattering. And if you believe that Gore's comments about the world nuclear situation were not about the US anti-nuclear movement, I really don't see why you added them in the first place. In fact, I think a strong case exists from removing all these quotes and position statements from these activists, and simply list them as people most involved in the movement. Does that material actually add anything to our understanding of the movement? Fell Gleaming^talk 16:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

FG, I have a question, if I might get one in among all of yours. Why don't you cite your sources correctly? See WP:CITE. You should give author, title, date, publisher/city, page number and, where it is an online source, the URL should be linked to the title. Come on. You have been on Wikipedia long enough to use cites correctly. Book cites go at the bottom, with the in-line footnotes merely identifying the book and giving the page number. Other cites go in line. Please don't be lazy. You can't pretend you're a newbie any more. Please be a responsible Wikipedian and read the WP:MOS as well as WP:CITE so that other editors don't have to clean up after your citation form and style errors. It is just rude to be so sloppy. Thanks! -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)