User:0xtomato/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.) Nuclear reactor.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose to evaluate this article because it is relevant to what we're learning about in class, and it's something that I have previous knowledge about, so I would have a higher chance of picking up on any misleading information than if I chose an article on something which I have no knowledge about. Additionally, nuclear energy is a key part of the green transition, and it's important that publicly available information about it is accurate and easy to understand.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The lead section of this article is written well, with a neutral tone and acceptable source citations, but I have to agree with one of the flagged points of the article that the lead section is too short to adequately summarize all of the article's main points. This is based purely on intuition, but I would guess that a sizable chunk of the readers who go the nuclear reactor page are concerned with either their safety or their impact on the environment, both of which are discussed in further sections, but neither of which are featured in the lead section.

The content of this article is generally good, with a few exceptions. From a pure editing standpoint, there are a few typos and grammatical errors that should be removed, such as an errant comma in the "Life-Time" section, which itself is a typo. Additionally, there are some areas of the content that I believe are only tangentially relevant, and would be better off if briefly mentioned with a link to sources or other Wikipedia pages for further reading. This would also help my other critique of the content of this article, which is that it is simply too long to be easy readable (the flags agree with me).

On tone and balance, I see no possible improvements with this article. If anything, I think it goes too far out of the way to avoid discussing anything that could be remotely political, such as omitting anything about GHG emission levels in the section for "Emissions", but I suppose nothing can be too unbiased.

The sources and references of this article are also top-tier. Everything is properly cited, and there are almost no instances where something that is written has no citation when it should, with the possible exception of some of the reactor's parts, such as control rods, having no explanation for what they are.

This article could use some help in terms of organization and writing quality. As for organization, there does not seem to be a clear structure for the article, with the exception of aligning chronology by putting the "early reactors" section as the first one after "Operation". Especially with the final two sections, they seem to be thrown in randomly, with no thought given to how they relate to other concepts discussed in the article. Additionally, the writing is not easily readable, although it is a tall task when talking about such a complicated subject. However, I believe there are still areas for improvement, especially in the "Operation" section.

Images and media are very sparse in this article, but they are well-selected and do a good job of augmenting the writing.

The article is part of multiple WikiProjects, including two "high-importance" ones, energy and science policy, so it has a lively talk page full of discussion and potential edits. A common theme is the debate whether or not to feature more content about the people who build and work in nuclear reactors, including unions. Some feel this is vital to understanding the subject, and some feel it's irrelevant to the actual device of a nuclear reactor, which is what the article should be about.

Overall, I'd give this article a B+. It has lots of balanced, unbiased, informative content, but is missing a few critical pieces of information that fit into the wider context of its' WikiProjects, and is a bit too long and dense to easily understand.