Towards the beginning of the school year I had begun to sort out the background framework of my thesis. My provisional work was enough to help me start thinking about methodology, but has since then lacked in foundation for me to smoothly transition fully to my methodology. As a result, I have had issues in trying to clearly explain how my methodology fits within my questions and the top of my hourglass, so to speak. To help me work through this first section of my thesis (which is arguably the most important in setting the stage to my research, so to speak, I have included the beginning of an outline. Most parts of my outline are in question form to demonstrate what the reader should get out of the section.
- Background
- Why is it important to be resilient to nuclear power disaster in the first place?
- What is climate change? To what extent is it a problem? What does it have to do with using nuclear power plants?
- Alternate energy=nuclear power; how does nuclear power work? What are the pros and cons or using it as an alternative energy?
- Three major risks: waste, nuclear proliferation, technological disaster (mostly radiation)
- This research is specifically on technological disaster because of the connections to resilience/vulnerability.
- Three major risks: waste, nuclear proliferation, technological disaster (mostly radiation)
- Nuclear disaster past and present; what did we learn from Chernobyl/TMI? What are things we need to know more about in nuclear power/disaster? Particularly, what do we know is different between meltdowns, etc., and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan? How does time play a role in the changing industry?
- Make sure to include the International Nuclear Event Scale.
- How has technology within the nuclear power industry play a role in this discussion? What are the changes in technology over time?
- Jasanoff’s (2008) concept of “ right to know”(? is this where this should go?) and the role of trust between the government and the people. Can use Bhopal as an example, but make sure to relate back to nuclear disasters. Does this concept apply?
- Introduce Resilience
- What is resilience? Most basic definition + origin of the concept if applicable (possible sources here = Benson & Craig 2014)
- Most relevant uses and critiques (Kulig et. al. 2013) (Redman and Miller 2015) (Cutter et. al. 2008) (Lindell and Perry 2012)
- What are different resilience models and how can they help this research? Should complicate the theory!!!
- In particular, using social, disaster, and community resilience
- What is vulnerability and what does it have to do with resilience? This should highlight that resilience and vulnerability often work within the same framework. Vulnerability can be seen as what highlights the place-based nature of this research, in that the resilience of place depends on the ability to adapt as vulnerability is highlighted. Should use (Adger 2006) and (Cutter et. al. 2008)
- Resilience is a complex combination of factors, and determining hierarchy of which is most important depends on valuation of those factors. This highlights the cultural and place-based components of resilience.
- ie. what is successful community function? value/can you make rules for something like this?
- Use as transition into situated context
- Why is it important to be resilient to nuclear power disaster in the first place?
- Framing Question
- To what extent can a country be resilient to nuclear plant disaster events?
- Situated Context
- 2011 Tohoku Earthquake details
- EQ strength, maybe map of epicenter, tsunami inundation, radiation spread, evac zones, etc.
- Tsunami details and how that affected power plant (generators)/sea wall
- Immediate response of country, news reports, etc. What measures were taken at plant? What happened during evacuations?
- What kind of plant was Fukushima and what role did that play in the event? This might be a good place to put original policy/safety standards.
- 2011 Tohoku Earthquake details
- Context Justification
- How did Japan start their nuclear power industry after atomic bombings?
- Use energy security and pro-nuclear resource discourse in (Kinefuchi 2015) (Sato 2007)
- Nuclear culture as seen in astro-boy, etc. (Szasz 2007)
- Number of NP plants in the country compared to other countries, where does the country stand in the international market?
- Use energy security and pro-nuclear resource discourse in (Kinefuchi 2015) (Sato 2007)
- What does Japan have that other countries don’t? AKA what is so significant about Japan?
- Experience with other nuclear disasters of other kinds (bombings). What role does this play?
- Earthquake culture (to what extent does this translate? Perhaps pull from David Puling book Bending Adversity)
- Japan’s culture of sense of place.
- What major cultural implications does Japan have for sense of place, particularly in the context of evacuation and rehabilitation? How can this play a role?
- How did Japan start their nuclear power industry after atomic bombings?
Overall, I am pretty happy with this framework. I think it is enough to start building up my methods section in a more realistic way. I expect this will still need a lot of tweaking, and there are likely missing components will but I expect those to become more apparent as I flush out each point more. Notably, I need to build more on which source I use for which claim and component of the framework. I have a lot of great sources that I can use but only a few of them have been obvious enough to use in certain spots. To dig deeper I will need to start making connections between my framework and other readings in a less obvious, more obscure way. By ‘obscure’ I don’t mean that I should jump to connections that aren’t really there, but I do need to make this part (and all parts) of the research interesting and relatively new. By digging a little deeper I can make connections that readers can feel are worth learning more about.