Talk:List of civilian nuclear incidents

As it stands, this page name is unworkable. It will cause confusion and ambiguity with the previous List of civilian nuclear accidents which is not in the interests of providing clear information. An event that cannot be included in List of civilian nuclear accidents would most likely be described by the International Nuclear Event Scale as an 'anomaly' or an 'incident'. At the very least, the article should be renamed "List of minor civilian nuclear incidents", since minor incidents are what is being described here, not accidents. Nailedtooth (talk) 04:41, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point. Renaming the page to incident sounds like the right approach.  You can do it, or I will sometime over the next couple of days. Christopher Rath (talk) 15:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Have moved page to List of civilian nuclear incidents, per discussion below. Johnfos (talk) 04:14, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Unreliable source
The three current entries in this article are based on unreliable sources as per wp:v. The author of the cited book has no expertise in the field (his Masters is in Communications), and has at times falsely claimed to have a PH.D. The cited book is also out of print - making the citations difficult to verify - and the book is approaching 30 years old, making it far out of date. If these entries are correct, better citations should be found for them. I propose deleting the entries if other sources cannot be found. Nailedtooth (talk) 04:55, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Mark Stephens worked for the President's Commission on the accident at TMI (see []). As a member of that Public Information Task Force I believe he was emminently qualified to write the book cited as the source for the incidents in this WP article.  It would be wonderful see other sources cited, but I don't believe the Mr. Stephen's idiotic behaviour later in his life is reason to discount this book or his work for the President's Commission. Christopher Rath (talk) 01:36, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't have a particular problem with this source, but we shouldn't rely on any one source too heavily. The Brown's Ferry fire material is already verified by another source (see below), and I will include this as a citation in the article. Johnfos (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

1975 Brown's Ferry Plant fire
I appreciate that several people are working on these nuclear lists to see how they might best be done. At this stage I would comment that 1975 Brown's Ferry Plant fire can in no way be appropriately described as a "minor incident".

The fire started on March 22, 1975 in the electricial control cables from the use of a candle to detect air leaks, and burned uncontrolled for 7.5 hours: The two operating GE nuclear reactors were at full power when the fire began. One of them went dangerously out of control for several hours and was not stabilized until a few hours after the fire was put out. The reactor's sophisticated emergency safety devices failed totally. The unit in the end was controlled by some available equipment which was not part of the eleaborate safety apparatus, and which emerged from the fire undamaged as a matter of chance.

The fire was a catalyst for the later resignation of three engineers in GEs nuclear energy division.

-- See Vivian Weil, (1983). "The Browns Ferry Case" in Engineering Professionalism and Ethics, edited by James H. Schaub and Karl Pavlovic, and published by John Wiley & Sons. Johnfos (talk) 01:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It doesn't seem to be an incident that most people would regard as 'minor', but at the same time it also doesn't qualify as a civilian nuclear accident, so the next best place is this page. The damage was only proximal to a nuclear reactor (the same damage could have occurred to a coal fired plant) and didn't directly involve any fissile material or damage to the reactor itself. So we end up with a fire that very well could have caused a nuclear accident, but didn't. I know it sounds a bit twisty, but an accident that creates the risk of a nuclear accident is not in and of itself a nuclear accident. Similarly, the consequences of the accident/incident are not relevant in determining the classification. Minor incidents (and I'm again, not describing Browns Ferry fire as minor) can reveal systemic problems which require severe corrective measures, but that has no impact on the initial severity of the minor incident. I'm in favor of keeping the Browns Ferry fire on this page, but the entry should be changed to note the risk the fire created. Nailedtooth (talk) 08:22, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes I will update the entry on this page. Also I plan to change the name of this page to List of civilian nuclear incidents, per Lists, which states that overly precise list titles can be less useful and make the list difficult to find. The precise inclusion criterion of the list should be spelled out in the lead section. I think the word "minor" is to be avoided. Johnfos (talk) 18:31, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

notable ?
What's the purpose of this page? There are hundreds and hundreds of small incidents proof at nuclear power plants. By the logic of the INES scale, as it claims to be logarithmic, and there has already been 1 scale 7 incident (chernobyl) there should be millions of scale 0/1. So who decides what is notable? Why only this handfull? If this list is so incomplete, why not remove it at all, in order not to raise the wrong assumption that there are not so many incidents? -- eiland (talk) 14:21, 11 December 2010 (UTC)