Talk:Anti-nuclear movement

Duplication & distinctions

I'm a bit unclear on the structure here, either what we need or what we have.

Do we really need two articles Anti-nuclear movement and Anti-nuclear protests with overlapping text? Aren't the protests part of the movement and, if so, should the protests article become a redirect to a section here?

Is there any single "anti-nuclear movement"? There are multiple issues. One might favour retaining nuclear weapons but want to ban tests; this is the position of various governments. Or one might abhor military use but favour civilian reactors. Nukes in space is another issue. I think we need a separate article on Nuclear disarmament, probably with Ban the bomb as a redirect and two-way linking between it and Nuclear non-proliferation.

My guess is this article needs headings for each of the distinct issues and a fairly large section on the protests. Sandy Harris 11:27, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Sandy makes good points, but let me ramble a little. Yes, I think, to some extent, there is a generic anti-nuclear movement. It is best regarded from a sociological standpoint, because the range of nuclear technologies is sufficiently wide that I question if there is a single technically based argument that encompasses nuclear power, nuclear weapons, nuclear medicine, industrial use of radioisotopes, food sterilization, smoke detectors, nondestructive testing (even of non-nuclear power alternatives), etc. There are a number of articles on the technologies, and some of them indeed could use improvements both at the policy level and at the level of popular protests. I just found some material I will add to the Chernobyl Disaster article.

Indeed, it would be interesting to find if some of the protest groups are considering strong arguments for their case, such as the technical obsolescence of tactical nuclear weapons given the availability of precision guided munitions.

So, there are a family of articles here. Nuclear engineering might be expanded beyond CZ: Nuclear Engineering Subgroup to be the index to technologies, anti-nuclear movement to be the undifferentiated protest, and then protest and support for individual technologies. I don't know if it helps give my perspective, but there's a nuclear power plant a fair distance upwind of me. It doesn't frighten me, but, if there's a leak, I'm among the volunteers qualified to go out with instruments and respirators and start tracking the cloud, and working in evacuation if necessary. At the same time, there's a major and controversial wind power project in the waters much closer -- with a lot more controversy, because its proposed location would wipe out fisheries and affect Native American traditional areas, while there's an alternate location, about 20-30 miles away and somewhat farther offshore, that has none of these disadvantages. Both windpower and nuclear power have benefits and liabilities. Howard C. Berkowitz 13:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Howard that there is a generic anti-nuclear movement from a sociological standpoint, and the bibliography provided shows that. Many, many, books have been written about the anti-nuclear movement.

Compared with Wikipedia, I'm finding that there is an emphasis on CZ on shorter articles and more subpages. Every article I start has the subpages template at the top, and I viewed Anti-nuclear protest as a subpage of Anti-nuclear movement. And when I write an article that is more than 32kb long there is a message reminding me about the problems of length, so I have been trying to keep articles well below this threshold. John Foster 18:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Do think of Related Articles pages, which are more powerful than See Also on WP. They help organize thoughts.

While I would say we don't want overly large articles, preferring highly linked ones, the 32K value probably isn't a serious limit; it's something no one has ever decided to remove. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:56, 14 May 2010 (UTC)