Talk:Hanford Engineer Works

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 02:24, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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B reactor in 1944

• ... that during World War II the nuclear reactors at the Hanford Engineer Works (B reactor pictured) came under Japanese attack? Source: Japanese Balloon Attack Almost Interrupted Building First Atomic Bombs
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Regent Cinema, Deal
  • Comment: Article was forked from an existing one, but greatly expanded in my user space. Moved to mainspace on 1 November 2022

Created by Hawkeye7 (talk). Self-nominated at 20:44, 31 October 2022 (UTC).

• Hawkeye7: Hi, I am willing to review this nomination, but think this should have been 5Xed before coming here. Can you plz provide diffs showing the fork was 5Xed while in subpage or article space? --Mhhossein ^talk 06:49, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  It was a redirect before, so zero content [1]. I moved 18 kb from the Hanford Site article to the sandbox [2] and the article is 67 kb now that it has been moved to the mainspace. Therefore, ~50 kb of original prose added. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:00, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately there should be more expansions so that the nomination can go ahead. Per Fivefold F4: "If some of the text was copied from another Wikipedia article, then it must be expanded fivefold as if the copied text had been a separate article." Hence, the article should become 90kb. --Mhhossein ^talk 12:17, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I've never seen that before. The article is a new one, and the text moved across was new too. It wasn't in the old article ten days previously. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:31, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I should highlight that I am in favor of moving it ahead since I know expansion from 67 to 90 kb is a huge amount of work, an you have already done a lot of edits and insertions. Maybe we can consider an exception here since you said the content from the older page was not older than 10 days. Pinging BlueMoonset for their insight. --Mhhossein ^talk 09:20, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Mhhossein, I don't believe the Fivefold page is up to date, and I wouldn't use it. Pages like WP:DYK and WP:DYKSG are regularly maintained and are "official", and you'll find the following on the latter in A5: If some of the text in a nominated article was copied from another Wikipedia article, and the copied text is more than seven days old, then the copied text must be expanded fivefold as if the copied text had been a separate article. I don't have time to check the copied-in text; Hawkeye7 started adding to Hanford Site on October 5, nine days before he created the Hanford Engineer Works article with a chunk of text from Hanford Site on October 14, and much of what he added to Hanford Site is more recent than October 5. I'd say nine days is a reasonable stretch of seven—recall that D9 says The "seven days old" limit can be extended for a day or two upon request., and I think that could stretch to this situation if needed. If you can trace the original addition of the copied text, you'll be able to know for sure how much needs to be 5x expanded and how much doesn't. I hope this helps! BlueMoonset (talk) 15:33, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

The new text was added to Hanford Site between 8 and 13 October. It was 32 kB (5,112 words) on 7 October, and 43 kB (6,895 words) on 13 October. So 11 kB (1,783 words) was added. The new article (Hanford Engineer Works), then in my userspace, was started on 14 October with 18 kB (2,983 words) from the old one, so 7 kB (1,200 words) was old. It was 68 kB (11,266 words) when moved to the mainspace on 1 November. I had forgotten that I could nominate the article for GA. I have done so now. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:23, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Hawkeye7, given the good explanations by BlueMoonset I think the nomination can go ahead. But do you like to keep the review for the time the page is a GA? That way a GA would be featured on the main page. --Mhhossein ^talk 13:22, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I have nominated the article for GA. This will avoid having to invoke IAR, but it is unlikely to be reviewed in 2022. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:01, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: Does it mean we should close this nomination or you'd like to keep on? --Mhhossein ^talk 11:20, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Close the nomination now and I will re-nominate it next year. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:44, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

The article has been picked up for review, so might as well hold this nomination open a little longer. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:19, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Mhhossein and BlueMoonset: The article has passed its GA review. So we can proceed. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:09, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Congrats for the GA, Hawkeye7. Everything is OK with the prose which is a GA now. I found no copyvio. Though you may chose to go by the suggested hook, it is not interesting enough for me to be honest. I think you can create a more interesting hook from "Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atomic bomb in the Trinity test, and in the Fat Man bomb that was used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945," specially the portion showing the site has some links with the the second nuclear weapon of the only two ever used in wars. Best, --Mhhossein ^talk 05:19, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Well I tried it out on people, and they knew that if knew anything about the Manhattan Project at all, but the hook was "How did that happen?!!" Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:29, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

ALT1 ...that plutonium produced in the nuclear reactors at the Hanford Engineer Works (B reactor pictured) was used in the Fat Man bomb used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:29, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Good. --Mhhossein ^talk 05:22, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

• I've struck ALT0 because it's really an exaggeration. The balloons were not aimed at specific targets, and the event described in the source was that a power line which fed the plant was shorted, causing a transient interruption in electric power which had no significant effect on the plant. It's a bit of a stretch to say the plant "came under attack". I don't have access to the off-line source for ALT1, so I guess AGF on that. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:28, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

B class review

So far, I have only completed reviewing the following sections. Djmaschek (talk) 04:52, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

• Introduction
• Contractor selection
• Site selection
• Land acquisition

B class. All done! There were remarkably few errors. Here are some comments. Djmaschek (talk) 04:58, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

• Richland, paragraph 5: "...International Brotherhood of Teamsters threatened to ban the use of union drivers, citing safety issues." (I'm confused. Why would the Teamsters - a union - want to ban the use of union drivers? Is it possible that they wanted to ban local drivers?)

  Union drivers. ie refusing to drive them. What I would call a black ban. Not sure what the American term would be. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:02, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

• Richland, last paragraph: "pumping from the Colorado River" > "Columbia River". (Since I'm certain this was wrong, I made the change already.)

  That's right. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:02, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: See the union vs. local issue above. Djmaschek (talk) 05:04, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Hanford Engineer Works/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Djmaschek (talk · contribs) 04:34, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Initial Review

I really already did the hard part when I reviewed this article for B class. It had remarkably few issues. I will go over it once more to make sure nothing was missed. Djmaschek (talk) 04:34, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Union drivers

I looked up the term "black ban" and didn't find anything on-line that related to labor unions. Consequently, I still do not understand this sentence: "The subcontractor ran afoul of wartime regulations requiring the company to hire local drivers, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters threatened to ban the use of union drivers, citing safety issues." Again, why would the Teamsters Union resist the use of union drivers? Does this mean the Teamsters threatened to ban non-Teamsters Union drivers? Or did they want to ban non-union drivers? If this baffles me, I expect other readers will be equally puzzled. Djmaschek (talk) 04:54, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Google says a black ban is "a mass refusal to supply or purchase goods or services in an attempt to force a particular decision or action". It is referred to in our article on green bans, but not defined there. The teamsters placed a ban on union drivers ie said that they would not drive the trucks. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:17, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Djmaschek: I've tweaked the wording to avoid confusion. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:51, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Review 1

This is GA class. The only issue (Union drivers) has been cleared up to my satisfaction. Everything else seems to be in order: well-written, verifiable, broad, neutral, stable, illustrated, citations, photos. Djmaschek (talk) 01:45, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Distinct topic?

What is the difference between the topic of this article and that of Hanford Site?

They seem to heavily overlap. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 00:44, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

It is a subarticle. Hanford Site covers the entire history of the site from ancient times to the present day. This article only covers its wartime role as part of the Manhattan Project. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:55, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Overprecise inflation

Most or all of the "equivalent to" dollar figures are ridiculously overprecise, but I don't know how to fix that given the particular inflation template used. EEng 03:59, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I do. The template uses the precision of the input, I take it that you favour rounding the output? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:52, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

First, most (but not all) of the calculations should use the "US-GDP" index, not "US"; I've fixed those.

On the original point: Saying that $5,148,462 is equivalent to $55,151,443 in 2022 is just ridiculous -- the tables used in the calculations are only three and four places themselves (e.g. open Template:Inflation/US-GDP/dataset for editing). And even if more places made technical sense, there's still the question of the reader's ability to make use of extra precision. So let's say $55,150,000 were formally justified (which it's not) -- how does the 50,000 (which is 0.1% of the overall figure) tell the reader anything? Same, really, for the 100,000, which is 2% of the total. Such overprecision blunts our readers' attention while enlightening them not at all. If this was an article I was writing for some other venue, I'd just go with $55 million, but to err on the side of not losing information, I think "$55.1 million" is right. If I don't hear any objection soon, I'll make such adjustments throughout. (I figured out how to do it.) EEng 18:35, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

No objection. I was uncertain where, when and whether to use US-GDP, postponed it until work on the article was finished, and then forgot about it. For R&D projects it's use was obvious, but not so much here. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:27, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Everything but stuff like salaries and rents should be US-GDP. EEng 07:04, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

That the Army accounted for expenses to the penny is one of the themes of the article, ending with the request that Dupont, which spent millions, pay back 33 cents of its one dollar fee. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:56, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm actually aware of that, and there may be a place where a bit of a wink might be given to that. (Not for this article, but I seem to recall that when the Pu was handed over from one branch of the project to another, someone had to sign a receipt giving "Estimated value: $273,983,455.58" or something -- that would be great to include!.) But in general, we might say somewhere that everything was tallied to the penny, and certainly the 33 cents is fun, but in general we should still round both original and inflated figures, unless there's some special interest in the exact number. But rounding the original figures is more trouble than I'm willing to go to right now. EEng 07:04, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Better wording needed

"The separation plants contained a separation building, where the separation was conducted..." Would it be possible to eliminate the three-fold repetition of the word "separation"? John (talk) 18:54, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Sure. Re-phrased. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:47, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Nicely done. John (talk) 02:10, 17 July 2024 (UTC)