Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/High Explosive Research/archive1
- 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 by Sarastro1 via FACBot (talk) 21:03, 1 September 2017 [1].
High Explosive Research edit
After Tube Alloys and the British contribution to the Manhattan Project comes the third article in the series, High Explosive Research. Jim, Bernard and Sir Humphrey decide build an atomic bomb. I'm afraid that aspects of the article may make no sense to a non-British reader. Although it is a new article, created in February, it has passed GA and A class reviews. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:45, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Image review
- http://www.gahetna.nl/over-ons/open-data seems to say that some but not all of the collections are open - where did we get the licensing for File:John_Anderson,_1st_Viscount_Waverley_1947.jpg? Don't see it on the source page...
- In the case of File:John_Douglas_Cockcroft_1961.jpg, the source page actually says PD not CC. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:34, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, but there is no PD tag on Commons. I don't know the rules over there. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:25, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- Failing all else I suppose you could use PD-because, but have you seen this cat? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:33, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, and this one too, but none of them apply. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:33, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- Failing all else I suppose you could use PD-because, but have you seen this cat? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:33, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, but there is no PD tag on Commons. I don't know the rules over there. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:25, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Support Comments on prose by Finetooth
edit
- Having reviewed the Hanford Site article many years ago at GAN, this sounds pretty familiar. Even so, I don't know enough to critique the claims involving complex science or engineering. Here are suggestions related to prose, style, and the MOS. Nothing big, but lots of little things caught my eye. The article seems to be in generally good shape.
- Lede
- ¶1 Link Quebec Agreement.
- ¶3 "Britain thereby became the third country to test nuclear weapons." – Mention the second for those who might not know?
- Tube alloys
- ¶2 "who ironically could not work" – Maybe drop "ironically" if that is a Wikipedia judgment.
- ¶3 "A new directorate known as Tube Alloys was created to coordinate this effort." – Insert, "a deliberately misleading name" after "Tube Alloys"?
- Manhattan Project
- ¶3 "but the project would need overwhelming priority" - For consistent verb tense, "would have needed"?
- ¶4 "the joint British-Canadian Montreal Laboratory" – En dash British–Canadian to indicate disjuncture?
- End of American cooperation
- Organisation
- ¶3 "With Portal's appointment came consideration of splitting Anderson's committee, which functioned as both an advisory committee and as an interdepartmental committee." – Recast to avoid repeating "committee" three times followed by three more in the next two sentences.
- ¶3 "In March 1947, the dynamic Roger Makins...". – Delete "dynamic"?
- Decision
- ¶2 "The meeting was about to decide against it on grounds of cost, when [Ernest] Bevin arrived late and said "We've got to have this thing. I don't mind it for myself, but I don't want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked at or to by the Secretary of State of the United States as I have just been in my discussion with Mr Byrnes. We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs... We've got to have the bloody Union Jack flying on top of it." – Words within direct quotations should generally not be linked, per MOS:LINKSTYLE. Ditto for linked terms in the other block quotes in this section.
- Generally, but the words do not appear in the surrounbding text, and the user may not know what they mean.
- ¶3 "in charge of the Ministry Of Supply's Armaments Research Department" – Lowercase "o" in "Of"?
- ¶4 "officially requested an atomic bomb in 9 August 1946" – "on" rather than "in"?
- ¶2 "The meeting was about to decide against it on grounds of cost, when [Ernest] Bevin arrived late and said "We've got to have this thing. I don't mind it for myself, but I don't want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked at or to by the Secretary of State of the United States as I have just been in my discussion with Mr Byrnes. We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs... We've got to have the bloody Union Jack flying on top of it." – Words within direct quotations should generally not be linked, per MOS:LINKSTYLE. Ditto for linked terms in the other block quotes in this section.
- Uranium
- ¶1 "Sir John Anderson and US Ambassador John Winant hammered out a deal with the Belgian government and Edgar Sengier, the director of Union Minière, in May 1944 for the mine to be reopened and 1,720 long tons (1,750 t) of ore to be purchased at $1.45 a pound." – I'd prefer "negotiated" to "hammered out", and I think the sentence would flow better if you started with "In May 1944,".
- ¶3 "the principal reason the Americans reopened the negotiations resulting in the Modus Vivendi" – Should this be rendered as "a modus vivendi" or possibly more plainly as "a provisional accord"?
- Nuclear reactors
- ¶1 "British staff at the Montreal Laboratory designed a larger reactor, known as BEPO, in 1945 and 1946..." – "British staff at the Montreal Laboratory had designed a larger reactor,
known asBEPO, in 1945 and 1946..." since BEPO is explained in Uranium metal plant, and the action is in the past? - ¶2 "Such an event that did indeed occur in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986." – Remove "that"?
- ¶1 "British staff at the Montreal Laboratory designed a larger reactor, known as BEPO, in 1945 and 1946..." – "British staff at the Montreal Laboratory had designed a larger reactor,
- Plutonium-processing facilities
- Bomb design
- ¶2 "The first lenses were delivered in 1952, so and there were enough for two sets..." – "so and"?
- ¶3 "which not until late 1951." – Missing word, "was"?
- ¶3 "while they were spherical to within 0.75 thou..." – Link thou since it won't be familiar to most readers.
- Testing
- ¶2 "as there was unrest in Egypt" – "Unrest" seems too mild. Would something more direct like "as a revolution there was underway" be better?
- Outcome
- ¶3 "The was desired..." – "This was desired..."?
- ¶3 "led to the United States Atomic Energy Act being amended in 1958..." – Slightly smoother as "led to amendment of the United States Atomic Energy Act in 1958..."?
-
- You are welcome. All looks good with the exception of the links within the blockquotes. I halfway agree with you. I wouldn't think it strictly necessary to link "great power", "isolationist", "Secretary of State", or "Foreign Secretary" within the quotes since I think most readers can suss out the meaning OK, but "Mr. Byrnes" is a different matter and possibly "Union Jack". Regardless, I'm happy to support on prose, as noted above. Finetooth (talk) 15:05, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Comments by Dudley edit
- "The first nuclear reactor in the UK, a small research reactor known as GLEEP, went critical" Is not criticality required specifically for nuclear power rather than bombs? I assume that it is an intermediate stage for a bomb, but clarification would be helpful.
- Nuclear reactors can be used to breed plutonium, which is used in bombs. When a uranium-235 nucleus absorbs a neutron, it splits in two parts, releasing energy and more neutrons. In a reactor, we have a controlled nuclear chain reaction in which the number of neutrons in the system stays steady. In a bomb, there is an out-of-control nuclear chain reaction that blows everything apart. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:35, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
- The lead is unclear at the end. It should be stated that Blue Danube was designed by HER, and that the hopes for a renewal of the special relationship were because the missile was a failure (if this is true). When did HER end?
- "Anglo-Canadian Montreal Laboratory" The Canadian role has not been explained.
- The Canadian role in the Manhattan Project is detailed in the Montreal Laboratory article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:35, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
- "Attlee set up a cabinet sub-committee, the Gen 75 Committee (known informally by Attlee as the "Atomic Bomb Committee"),[52] on 10 August 1945". As this is going back to an earlier date than the previous section, I think "Attlee had set up" would be clearer.
- "which functioned as both an advisory and an interdepartmental body" I am not clear what this means. What was the interdepartmental function?
- "had met in Washington, DC, in November 1944, and drawn up a proposal for an atomic energy research establishment" Was this to be a purely British establishment, even though they met in Washington? If so, I would delete the location as confusing.
- I got confused about your comments about a reactor and separation plant. You appear to say that Britain could not afford both, and then that a facility for both was approved.
- "was approached by C. P. Snow" What office did Snow hold?
- I am not sure any change is needed, but it is interesting that there seem to have been two quite different reasons for building a bomb, Bevin's that it was required for prestige, and Attlee's reasonable argument that at the time it looked as if the USA might revert to isolationism, and Europe have to face an aggressive Soviet Union alone.
- "There was no known alternative fuel for nuclear reactors other than uranium, so securing an adequate supply was crucial to the British atomic energy programme." You have mentioned above plutonium as an alternative for bombs. Does the comment here refer to reactors for nuclear energy?
- More to follow. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:57, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
- "on the site of a poison gas plant" a former poison gas plant?
- In the lead you say the project terminated in 1953, but in the 'Gaseous diffusion plant' sub-section you appear to imply that it carried on until 1961. Were weapons of the later 1950s designed under a successor project?
- High Explosive Research built the plants. The plants continued to operate for many years after. The successor project was the British hydrogen bomb programme. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:22, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
- Sorry but I have abandoned this review. I cannot read pages with flashing images. Dudley Miles (talk) 15:44, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
- Thanks. That is very useful. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:55, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- "For safety reasons, he wanted the core inserted like a plug while the bomber was in flight." No change needed, but was he aware of the decision to make a similar change to Little Boy in case the plane crashed on take off?
- "Responsibility for the development of atomic bombs lay outside the realm of the Ministry of Defence. One reason for this was that it was only created in October 1946, with Tizard as the departmental scientific advisor." I do not understand this, although this may be because I have forgotten something you said earlier in the article. You say in the lead that the decision to launch the project was taken in January 1947, and it came under the Ministry of Supply. DNB on Tizard says he returned to Whitehall as chairman of the defence research policy committee in January 1947, but the committee was debarred from discussing nuclear weapons. So are you saying that the Ministry of Defence was excluded because it was considered too new to take responsibility for nuclear weapons, and because Tizard was regarded as an opponent of them?
- "The possession of nuclear reactors, the means to produce nuclear fuels and a repository of scientific knowledge led to the creation of a vast nuclear power industry." No change needed, but I have seen it argued that nuclear power was based on uranium instead to the safer thorium because thorium reactors would not produce fuel for bombs. Do you give any credence to this claim?
- Thorium was of interest in the early days because it was known to be abundant, whereas uranium was thought to be scarce. But once uranium became valuable, people started prospecting for it, and it was found to be not nearly as rare as first thought. The idea was that thorium can be irradiated to produce uranium-233, which is fissile, and can therefore be used in a reactor. Like plutonium, you first need to have a reactor to produce it. You can then breed more uranium-233 from thorium than you consume. This can be attractive to a country like India, which has plenty of thorium but not much uranium. For the rest of us though, it is far more convenient to breed plutonium from uranium-238, because uranium-233 has nasty decay products that are powerful gamma ray emitters, and it is therefore more difficult to handle than plutonium. Uranium-233 can be used in bombs; India has done so, and the Americans once built a bomb using uranium-233, just to show that they could. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:34, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
- A first rate article, although much of it is beyond my knowledge to judge. Dudley Miles (talk) 22:07, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
- Support. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:34, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
Support by Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:35, 16 August 2017 (UTC) I reviewed this article at GAN and again at Milhist ACR and have reviewed all the changes made since then, and consider that it meets the FA criteria. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:35, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Coordinator comment: Unless I've missed it somewhere, we still need a source review. It can be requested at the top of WT:FAC. Sarastro1 (talk) 20:28, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
Source review from Ealdgyth edit
What makes http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Home.html a high quality reliable source?- It is by Carey Sublette, who is generally regarded as an expert in the field. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:54, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
- Do we have an article on this person? Some sort of list of works? Ealdgyth - Talk 12:41, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- There is no article on him, although he is used as a source in 268 articles. Books that quote him include Jeremy Bernstein, Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element; Dilip Hiro, The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry Between India and Pakistan; Myra MacDonald, Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War; Bhumitra Chakma, The Politics of Nuclear Weapons in South Asia; and Bruce Cameron Reed The Physics of the Manhattan Project. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:42, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
- Do we have an article on this person? Some sort of list of works? Ealdgyth - Talk 12:41, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- It is by Carey Sublette, who is generally regarded as an expert in the field. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:54, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
Current ref 172 - you're citing the originals, so we need the original publication information as well as the fact that the information is reprinted/hosted on the web.You give publication locations for some of the sources in the References section, but don't give them for others. Be consistent and either give all of them or none of them.Same problem with locations for some of the journal cites (example the Bernstein, Barton ref) but not for others (see the Bernstein, Jeremey ref). Be consistent and give them all the time or none of the time.Sometimes you give the state/country for locations, sometimes you don't. Be consistent.- I randomly googled three sentences and nothing showed up except mirrors. Earwig's tool shows no signs of copyright violations.
Coordinator comment: I think we just need a response to Ealdgyth's last query about Carey Sublette. Sarastro1 (talk) 20:08, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Closing comment: It might be worth someone checking duplinks as we have one or two close together. Otherwise, between this and the A-Class review, I think we are good to go. Sarastro1 (talk) 21:03, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
- Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Sarastro1 (talk) 21:03, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.