Wikipedia:Featured article review/Uranium/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was delisted by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 3:39, 5 August 2023 (UTC) [1].

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Uranium

Notified: Mav, ComplexRational, Materialscientist, Double sharp, WP Elements, WP Physics, WP Mining, WP Energy, noticed in December 2021

Review section

This older featured article's nominator unfortunately hasn't been actively editing in several years, and some tuning-up work is needed. Two sections are orange-tagged as needing updated, and other material outside of these sections does not seem to have been updated since around the time of the FAC, including "This trend continued through 2006, when expenditure on exploration rocketed to over $774 million, an increase of over 250% compared to 2004. The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency said exploration figures for 2007 would likely match those for 2006". Some of the uncited text is non-problematic, but others such as a claim about skin absorption in the human exposure section should be cited. The layout has also deteriorated, with images and charts crammed into the article, regardless of whether there was room for them or not. Can be fixed, but it'll take some work. Hog Farm _Talk 18:32, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

• I agree that some cleanup and polishing work is needed. Recently, I reorganized, expanded, and added citations to the isotopes section, and my overarching impression is that similar work is needed elsewhere in the article – perhaps even a shuffling of the sections (e.g., why put isotopes after applications when a number of applications derive from nuclear properties?). However, I'm unsure how much time I'll have to commit in the near future – at the very least, I can't promise to be active enough to undertake this by myself. I could at least try to find some citations and do some minor copyediting. ^Complex/_Rational 21:40, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
• I have updated the parts that did need an update: 1) worldwide production and 2) post Cold War nuclear safety in Russia. Considering a strong decline in research and applications of uranium in the past decades, the article is still rather comprehensive. Materialscientist (talk) 02:00, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
• I think the article needs clarification and update in 'Human exposure'.
  • There are toxicity effects mentioned in the prose that aren't mentioned in the table about uranium toxicity. For instance, under reproductive effects, the table only mentions that Uranium miners have more first-born daughters, but there is a sentence above the table stating that Uranium is also a reproductive toxicant. It seems like the table should summarise all the toxicity effects, or perhaps be left out?

    The table has been removed. In general, approved toxicity effects of uranium are much less clear than what we expect from the general public fears. A characteristic example is the CDC official Toxicological Profile for Uranium: see, e.g. sections "Other uranium health effects", "Uranium and cancer" and "Children and Uranium" section on pp. 5-6. Materialscientist (talk) 23:37, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

  • All of the human impacts relate to individual toxicity, but there is also a lot of research on social impacts. ("Uranium social impact" gets 181k hits on Google scholar – so that's nearly 10% of the scholarship on uranium overall.) All of the top hits relate to the social effects of uranium mining.
    It's likely that some of this scholarship should be covered in Uranium mining, but it appears to be absent from that article as well. I notice that The Extractive Industries and Society journal did a special issue on uranium in 2020. So some of those articles should probably be cited in this article if it is to keep its FA rating.

    I disagree: "uranium social impact" has 1 hit, "social impact of uranium" has 177 hits, uranium "social impact" has 7k hits, and uranium social impact has 184k hits. Naturally, Google puts up the hits with "social impact" as most relevant, but after sorting out those, we see random hits. In other words, the actual number is ca. 7k out of 2,200k (0.3%), not 184k. The mentioned social impact refers to a more general issue of nuclear energy production rather than to uranium. This topic is covered in many Wikipedia articles, including Nuclear power debate, Public opinion on nuclear issues, Anti-nuclear movement, Pro-nuclear movement, Nuclear energy policy, Environmental impact of nuclear power, Nuclear power, and a dozen more. Materialscientist (talk) 08:30, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Your points about the search terms seem valid. I still feel like something is missing though. Maybe the best way to think about it is this:

If we search the article for the term 'waste', we get a sentence about early uses in glazings, and we get these sentences:

• The capacity of the surrounding sediment to contain the nuclear waste products has been cited by the U.S. federal government as supporting evidence for the feasibility to store spent nuclear fuel at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

• Approximately 73% of the budget [in 2015 Russia] will be spent on decommissioning nuclear reactors and nuclear facilities, especially those involved in state defense programs; 20% will go in processing and disposal of nuclear fuel and radioactive waste, and 5% into monitoring and ensuring of nuclear and radiation safety

• In nature, uranium(VI) forms highly soluble carbonate complexes at alkaline pH. This leads to an increase in mobility and availability of uranium to groundwater and soil from nuclear wastes which leads to health hazards

• Under 'Isotopes' we get, Uranium-236 occurs in spent nuclear fuel when neutron capture on 235U does not induce fission, or as a decay product of plutonium-240. Uranium-236 is not fertile, as three more neutron captures are required to produce fissile 239Pu, and is not itself fissile; as such, it is considered long-lived radioactive waste.

I don't feel like the article provides early context for these sentences. Why do we need Yucca mtn repository? Why is Russia allocating money to decommission these reactors? What is nuclear waste anyway? I think a very short (1-2 sentence) background earlier in the article to establish that Uranium is used by industry in a way that creates complex social issues around waste (and also mining) would be helpful. As it is, the article seems to assume the reader would already know this (which they may), but I think some accessibility here esp. for younger readers would be helpful.

We're talking about how waste moves in the groundwater, and the economics of Russia treating waste, but we haven't established that the waste exists or where it comes from or what it does (except obliquely in a very technical sentence buried in the section on isotopes).Larataguera (talk) 00:12, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I have added clarifying words. The issue of nuclear waste is covered in the linked nuclear waste article; it is relevant to various (and any) radioactive materials. We all know that radiation is unhealthy, first-hand, from visits to dentists and hospitals (when we see and wear X-ray shields), and from recent news about Zaporizhzhia, Chernobyl and Fukushima power plants. Russia doesn't decommission any reactors, only aged ones. Materialscientist (talk) 07:35, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for making those changes. Can you clarify whether you're opposed to some additional background about waste? Consider that Uranium "nuclear waste" gets 68k hits on scholar and "uranium waste" 3.9k, but "uranium glass" only gets 2.6k. But we link to uranium glass in the lead, and we don't link to nuclear waste in the lead, even though that search combination gets 26 times more coverage in the literature.

Maybe you can help me refine the search terms to identify the best way to frame this missing information? I think we can find search terms that outweigh some of the excessive historical information given in the lead. Consider that Uranium Klaproth only gets 2.2k hits; Uranium Péligot only 813, but we link to articles about both these scientists (and others) in the lead. Uranium "Indigenous people" gets 11.4k hits, suggesting social impacts that are far more represented in the literature than this detailed historical background. Larataguera (talk) 15:58, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Good point. Handling of radioactive waste is, and will be, a major international issue for decades. Meanwhile uranium glass has always been a curiosity, propagated by photographs of rare uranium glassware that shines in the dark; production of uranium glass was halted in the 1940s due to the emergence of nuclear projects. I rewrote the lead to reflect this. Materialscientist (talk) 23:33, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

That's definitely an improvement, thanks! It's still a little awkward that radioactive waste is only mentioned in relation to Dismantling of these weapons, together with the related nuclear facilities. Of course power generation is also an important source of waste in uranium-related industries, and most of the literature seems to treat these sources of waste fairly equally. (eg, [2]). I think the introductory sentence should mention both these sources of waste. Larataguera (talk) 12:52, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, the lead didn't mention that uranium is a health threat, which we take for granted as a common knowledge. I have added a sentence at the end of the lead to fix that (at the end because it fits best into the prose flow there), linking spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. Materialscientist (talk) 05:57, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

This is a significant improvement. Thanks for working on this! -Larataguera

What do you think about linking to Uranium in the environment in the lead? The last sentence could read Spent nuclear fuel and contamination from weapons manufacturing are sources of radioactive waste, which mostly consists of uranium-238 and poses significant health threat and environmental impact.

Linked (though Uranium in the environment is a weak article). Materialscientist (talk) 07:05, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

I know, it's terrible! I've often wondered how much responsibility a Featured Article has for immediately related sub-articles. It's difficult to be sure that we're adequately summarising and giving due weight to the topic of Uranium in the environment in this broader article when that subject is so underdeveloped. Larataguera (talk) 12:35, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Going over search terms again, the search pollution intitle:uranium yields 9.3k articles, which is perhaps not a huge proportion of the 186k for intitle:uranium. But, if we look at articles written after 2019, we get 2.1k/9k. So this is clearly an increasingly important part of the discussion in more recent literature. Larataguera (talk) 05:30, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• In the section on 'Human exposure' the introductory paragraphs about how people are exposed to uranium are overly general. There's definitely research that quantifies human exposure that we could cite, and this would help establish the significance of the issue. For example, I easily found a 2022 global meta-analysis describing exposure to uranium from mining activities. It seems the article could be improved by this additional information. (Does this affect 10,000 people or 10 million?) Perhaps there is a similar analysis for legacy pollution from weapon manufacturing sites. I haven't looked. Larataguera (talk) 22:47, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  I don't have access to the full text of that study. Its abstract talks about France, Portugal, and Bulgaria; uranium production there has always been negligible on the world scale [3]. Its thumbnail world map highlights minor players in the uranium production rather than key countries. Those key countries are Kazakhstan (45%), Namibia (12%), Canada (10%), Australia (9%), Uzbekistan (7%), and Russia (5%). We might get exposure data for Canada and Australia, but hardly for other key countries. In other words, various authors may claim "a global meta-analysis", to boost the importance of their work, but I strongly doubt they can provide one. Materialscientist (talk) 06:32, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't initially have access to it either, but now I've found the full text is available through WP library. (Does that link work for you?) I reviewed the article, and you're right that it's incomplete. It's an analysis of 54 studies from 16 countries. Maybe it's worth citing it to say that uranium mining appears to pose health risks from exposure to other potentially toxic trace elements? It doesn't really establish the scale of the problem.

  I think my main point is that I'm still concerned that recent studies of public health and environmental/social issues related to uranium aren't adequately summarised, and I think more thorough research would find some review papers that would allow us to be more detailed about the impacts of uranium-related industry. Most of the papers in the health section are from the early 2000s and the most recent is a CDC pocket guide from 2015. More recent scholarship is likely to assess public health and social issues. Do you think this paper might be useful? There's also this paper from 2014 full text assessing social/health issues in relation to Indigenous people in Australia, Canada, the United States and several African states – so that's fairly global. Thanks for your patience as I work to ensure that this featured article is updated with recent scholarship. Larataguera (talk) 14:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  I've read the articles, thanks for the links.

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151556 - this is a meta-analysis of contamination around uranium mines. Main results are in Table 3. Most data originate from 1-2 sites/country, hence a large spread, leaving many options for speculative (mis)interpretations. There is a clear correlation between U and Cd; however, Cd toxicity is relatively low, and Cd is more abundant at Zn mines; steel, battery and fertilizer plants, etc., rather than at uranium mines. There are no locations, and hence one can argue that few people live around those mines. Also, China aside, best statistics is obtained for countries that have virtually halted their uranium mining some 6 years ago (Germany, Portugal, France, Brazil, Romania, US) [4]. I_geo for China is moderate, and is likely a minor concern, considering other pollution sources in the region. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.03.055 - a nice analysis, but it covers social issues rather than mining or health; also many of its sources are obsolete. doi:10.1016/j.envint.2020.106107 - this is a meta-analysis of U-related health effects. Its first 9 pages tell us that U hurts us in many ways, but in the Conclusions on page 10, the authors suddenly back off and say that all effects are unclear. The article seems to focus on what U can do, but not what it does in reality. Materialscientist (talk) 06:34, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

It seems like you're still a little reluctant to include social impacts as in doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.03.055. Maybe a good middle ground here is to mention public health issues, so we're remaining in the health sphere, but still broadening the scope beyond individual health. Here's a 2019 paper: "Nuclear power and uranium mining: current global perspectives and emerging public health risks". Larataguera (talk) 21:15, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

My problem is not the criticism of uranium-related activities, but the unprofessional reviews on the topic. Authors pile up results that fit the public fear of radiation danger, without an adequate fact checking. As a random example, let me list a few problems that I've spotted in your recent link during my today's lunch break: 1) in fig. 2 the author shows U production for 2004–2017 and cites a reference from 2015. 2) All through the article he accentuates the global increase in U production, but in reality it fell by 50% from 2017 to 2020. 3) He claims that "Africa and Asia have emerged as major sources of uranium" but U mining in Africa has been stable for decades. 4) He points to the Karoo region in South Africa as an example of social abuse, but official sources [5] reveal that this information is obsolete: (Areva was acquired by Peninsula in 2014, and Peninsula withdrew from U mining there in 2018). 5) "Many mines are situated in countries undergoing conflict" - it is easy to slap such sentences, but I don't recall any conflict involving a major U producer in the past decades (except for Russia, but its wars don't seem to concern U mines). 6) And the final gem is the concluding sentence of the abstract: "This article provides recommendations for multilateral institutional collaboration on public health surveillance plus capacity building for young researchers." - nothing in the article elaborates the "capacity building for young researchers"; besides, such far-fetching recommendations should not originate from a one-author report. Materialscientist (talk) 06:02, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

The reason (or one reason) that mining pulled out of the Karoo was because of social opposition and concerns about public health.[6] This exit from the Karoo isn't an example of why these issues aren't important as you suggest. It's an example of how these issues are significantly impacting the industry.

As far as expansion into Africa and implications with conflict, the world nuclear association does say that new production is being developed in Africa, and lists several countries with ongoing conflicts. Some of these conflicts are specifically mentioned as disincentive to development. But the point isn't to argue details of specific sources. It's to point to an increasing number of articles exploring social and public health issues related to the uranium industry which are not mentioned at all in this article. Please don't pick apart the ones I find, just help me find the best ones. Larataguera (talk) 15:33, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

The article you linked [7] doesn't say "because of social opposition and concerns about public health". It says "Technical problems at the company's mine in Wyoming, the depressed price of uranium in the world market, and endless delays forced Peninsula Energy to reassess". Don't get me wrong, environmental topics are important, but it is much harder to find factual sources on them as compared to exact science. I wish other editors adequately cover them in other wikipedia articles, so that we could add brief summaries with wikilinks into elements articles like uranium. Materialscientist (talk) 03:03, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

yes, but the "endless delays" are clearly because of social opposition. The title of the article is "Victory for Campaign Against Uranium Mining Project". And the bulk of the article is about the social campaign and the public's concerns. It feels strange to pretend social issues weren't a major aspect of industry exit from the Karoo. But anyway, it doesn't feel like we're getting anywhere. I'm going to let it go.

I still feel like this shouldn't pass FAR without more content on social issues, and I'll reiterate the WP:UNDUE emphasis on individual historical scientists in the lead when social/environmental/health issues have greater weight in the literature. Not going to take up anymore of your time. Leave a message on my talk page if you want further thoughts. Thanks for the effort. Larataguera (talk) 11:17, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

• I've posted a request at WT:MED for someone there to look over the health effects sourcing to make sure everything is compliant with WP:MEDRS. Hog Farm _Talk 14:20, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for that note, @Hog Farm.

  The unencyclopedic table (not present at the time the article was promoted to FA originally) has to go entirely. We strongly avoid all in vitro studies, and even animal studies, and laundry lists of "one time, one study found" is not an encyclopedic approach, even if you pull that laundry list out of a review article.

  That said, the main problem is that all the sources are out of date. In an ideal world, that section would cite only sources from 2018 or later. As this is not an area with rapid changes in scientific opinion, we might stretch that back as far as 2013. Instead, very little of it has been updated since 2007, and most of the sources are even older than that.

  I don't think that an update would be difficult. Sources should be readily available, and much of the content is likely to be accurate. It's probably a couple of hours' work for one editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

  I just nixed the table with an edit summary pointing back to this FAR, hopefully the edit sticks. Hog Farm _Talk 16:41, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for doing that. So far, nobody has reverted you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:01, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

  A link to the WT:MED thread with newer sources that should be used. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:53, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

• Looks like there's still some updating needed - "The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency said exploration figures for 2007 would likely match those for 2006." in the resources & reserves, as well as a couple tags in the medical section for newer sources needed. This has made some good progress, but isn't quite there yet. Hog Farm _Talk 14:09, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  Updated resources, fixed the mentioned medical issues, removed one claim that had been rejected by a more recent and much more authoritative review. Materialscientist (talk) 02:31, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Still nothing on social impacts.... Larataguera (talk) 11:51, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

See above. Materialscientist (talk) 08:30, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

• There is unnecessary redundancy in the first two paragraphs. We should not give the relative proportion of U-238 twice (99% of uranium on Earth), nor should the half-life be repeated. These two paragraphs can probably be consolidated.Larataguera (talk) 12:57, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  Consolidated. Materialscientist (talk) 10:48, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

• What issues remain outstanding here? Nikkimaria (talk) 02:45, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
  • @WhatamIdoing and SandyGeorgia: or anyone else more familiar with MEDRS than I am - what's the MEDRS status of sourcing here now? From a quick scan, the uncited information about alpha particle absorption through the skin would need a source, and "While the CDC has published one study that no human cancer has been seen as a result of exposure to natural or depleted uranium" cited to one 2007 CDC webpage is likely insufficient sourcing. It does look like a lot of the medical content sources are pre-2010, but I'm not sure how problematic this is as I'm not aware of what the current rate of new studies on uranium exposure is. Hog Farm _Talk 19:41, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

    In a rush, but the info is dated and problematic, see this sample recent review, there is more. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:21, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

    @ComplexRational and Materialscientist: Is this something you're able to address? Nikkimaria (talk) 22:11, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

• Move to FARC - it looks like the MEDRS issues with dated sources have largely not been resolved. Hog Farm _Talk 13:47, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
• Move to FARC, stalled. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:33, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

FARC section

Moving as progress appears to have stalled. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:52, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

• Delist the last major edits were in April, and there are still uncited sections. I think it is time to let this go. Z1720 (talk) 19:02, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
• Delist - not worked on, some issues still remain. ¹⁴¹Pr {contribs} 19:28, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
• Delist, I guess as this has been stalled out for several months. It got a lot closer but there's still material needing cited and some other updating/cleanup needed - "although some studies indicate underinvestment in the late twentieth century may produce supply problems in the 21st century" claims "some studies" implying this is a significant view, but all the source actually presents is the view of one researcher in 2007, published by his employer. "The ultimate available supply is believed to be sufficient for at least the next 85 year" and the 85 years figure is from a source from 15 years ago - are we down to 70 years left, or has this estimate been updated? We can't just continue to treat that number with that source as current. I don't want to ignore the significant amounts of work that went into this, though. Hog Farm _Talk 14:08, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
• Delist, what Hog Farm said, and six months is a long enough wait. We still have incomplete citations (eg missing access dates), a See also farm, dated content (as cited by Hog Farm), and still large blocks of uncited text. This looks like the kind of article someone could finish up and bring back to FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
• Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:39, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.