Social Problems of Nuclear Energy

Final Paper

Overview

The final exam consists of a research paper on a topic of your choosing. It counts for 80% of your class grade. You are encouraged to write an in-depth paper analyzing a narrow question. If in doubt, you should go for a narrower question than you originally come up with. Expect to do some level of pre-research to scope out where the interesting questions lie before you set a topic.

The topic may focus on any dimension covered in the course, as well as related issues not directly covered. It must relate to how nuclear technology and society interact. You are especially encouraged to try to answer a genuine societal question by examining a set of technical parameters.

Bear in mind the maxims of good science: be objective, consider multiple views, evaluate the integrity of underlying data; or perform your own calculations. Avoid writing things that merely agree with one viewpoint, avoid citing data if you don’t understand how it came into existence.

The final paper is an analysis or critical review, but not a book report. The paper should support a thesis—an evidence-based claim that you will defend in your writing. This may require you to consider multiple, often contradictory views; evaluate the integrity of underlying data; or perform your own calculations. Do not write a book report that merely summarizes published claims from several sources without offering a critical take. Your paper needs to provide that critical interpretation to receive full credit.

Length

The paper needs to be long enough to defend your thesis. Brevity is a virtue, but the substance must be adequate. Most papers tend to be between 5,000 and 10,000 words, but these are only rough guidelines. If you have original data or extensive calculations, these can go into an appendix.

A typical structure for your paper might be

1. Overview and introduction (~250 words)
2. Brief context or history of your chosen question (~250 words)
3. Analysis of the question (4000–6000 words)
4. Discussions of your original findings (~500 words)
5. Conclusion—summary of findings and possible next steps (~500 words)

A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Your Research Paper

Step 1: Choose a Topic for Your Study

Choose a topic based on your own interests and experiences. It can be useful to pick a topic to explore alternative interests or career-related questions. Several students have turned their papers into their senior theses and used them to get jobs! One student turned his thesis into the core analytical model for the MIT Future of Nuclear Power Study.

Step 2: Develop Your Project and Write a Pre-Abstract

Once you have a topic in mind, you need to develop a narrow question that will drive your research and analysis.

1. Review literature about your topic to understand what others have said before you settle on the question. This review will also help you place your research within a context.
2. When writing your questions, consider whether the questions you’re asking are tractable. For example, avoid posing questions that would need information that you could not obtain. Also avoid straw-man questions for which answers are widely known and uncontested.

Tip: Remember, your topic and set of questions must pertain to social interactions of nuclear science and technology. You might choose an obvious interaction (e.g., reactor safety or economics); but sometimes interactions that are esoteric or not well studied (e.g., the impact of fusion reactors on nuclear proliferation) are more interesting and fruitful areas for research.

At the end of this process, you should be able to formulate a paper title and write a short (~100 word) “pre-abstract” that does the following:

1. Explains the importance of your question; specifically, what problem this line of inquiry eventually aims to solve.
2. Says something about how the answer to your question would build on previous work done by others.
3. Makes conjectures about methods or sources that might be useful during the research phase.

You can use this formula to help:

• General background
• Specific background
• Statement of knowledge gap
• We want to know… (a one-sentence summary of what you hope to answer)

Step 3: Research

Use academic literature to find information related to your questions. Journal articles are often efficient ways to find information, but the narrow scope of research published in journals means those findings are not necessarily definitive when it comes to social problems. You may need to read and reference many such articles, and not all articles will be current or use pertinent data. Books can be good for large issues if you find the right one. It is often worth visiting the physical stacks in the library and looking at books adjacent to those you might find in the online catalog. Industry newsletters like Nucleonics Week, Nuclear Fuel, Nuclear Engineering International, and Nuclear Intelligence Weekly are important resources for fine-grained industry news on history, politics, and economics. Websites, blogs, YouTube videos, marketing literature, and promotional materials are not generally considered citable in academic discourse; if you think it merits an exception, don’t hesitate to ask.

Be sophisticated in choosing data sources. NEI (a pro-nuclear lobbying organization) is hardly more credible than Greenpeace (an anti-nuclear lobbying organization). Select data from the most unbiased source you can find.

Check to make sure data is fresh and was based on good assumptions. If only older data can be obtained, discuss the limitations of that data. If that data is economic data, adjust for inflation using an appropriate inflation index to put everything on the same cost basis. Be aware of structural changes in technology or society that might make your research findings irrelevant to the contemporary social debate. Make sure you draw comparisons on level playing fields.

Read with a critical mind: get in the habit of questioning everything.

A note on references:

You must defend or cite every statement of fact that is not common knowledge among your academic peers. For this reason, you should keep track of your sources from the outset; it will be much easier than trying to dig up a reference weeks after you read it.

Step 4: Write an Outline

An outline should serve as a roadmap of how ideas segue, or flow, from one to another. Outlines are often done in bullet points to help during the writing stage, but every outline will look different. The only “right” way is the way that helps you plan your argument and structure your logic.

One way to get started with an outline is to “dump” your research into the proposed organizational structure of the paper:

1. Overview and introduction (~250 words)
2. Brief context giving the history of your topic (~500 words)
3. Analysis of the question 
   • Systematic analysis of the technology’s interactions with various social dimensions (~1000+ words per social dimension)
   • Extensive analysis of a social debate (~5000 words)
4. Discussions of your original findings (~1000 words)
5. Conclusion—summary of findings and possible next steps (~500 words)

You can begin to sort your research within each category and you can start to see how best to flow from one idea to the next. As you create your outline, you may realize that you have some gaps in your analysis that you need to fill by doing additional research.

Step 5: Write the First Draft

Use your outline as a way to help you write your first draft. In the process you might discover the need to expand on certain sections, or that certain arguments need to be re-ordered. The draft should keep track of your references, but your bibliography does not need to be in a polished format. Worry about style later; focus on substance at this stage.

Check: did you spell out assumptions in your data and assumptions in your analysis? Provide the reader with a warning of any shortcomings. It is better to be explicit about limitations than to stay silent, which is likely to cause the reader to judge that you didn’t realize the limitation existed.

Lean towards the use of expository form: The first paragraph of a section summarizes the main arguments in that section, then that argument is carefully made in a series of subsequent paragraphs. First sentence of each of those paragraphs summarizes what will be argued in that paragraph, and each sentence below provides the necessary evidence, argumentation, or support. You don’t need to let this format cramp your style, but it’s a good strategy if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

You can use discursive footnotes to expand on a matter where the extra information is important to integrity of the underlying argument but would normally distract from the flow of the paper. For example, footnotes are a good place to mention presumptions or limitations associated with a cited source, give a quick calculation of your own, or provide a methodological note.

Keep pure opinion out of your paper.

Be an honest broker of information, giving information that both supports and challenges your view. Similarly, you should feel free to challenge the assessments of others where you feel they fall short.

Step 6: Revise Your Paper

It can be useful to take a short break from writing and revisit your draft later. Often it can be helpful to have a friend or writing lab advisor read it to detect whether concepts are coming through clearly. During this stage you can revise your writing for clarity and style, and format references.

For citations, any complete format is acceptable. You are encouraged to use the Chicago Manual of Style format and place the full citation in a footnote attached to the end of a sentence that contains the information being referenced. Use page numbers in your citations when referencing specific information. URLs and DOIs are welcome.

Additional tips for good writing:

• Avoid passive constructions. For example: “Thorium reactors are regarded as more affordable than uranium reactors.” Who thinks that? Instead write, “Wang et al. (ref) argue that thorium reactors will be more affordable than uranium reactors.”
• Eliminate ex-cathedra statements: For example: “Thorium reactors will be cheaper than uranium reactors.” Or “Microreactors are safer than large reactors.” Are your claims infallible?
• Don’t insert value judgments: “Fortunately, the reactivity feedback is negative.”

For more help, see Johnson, Teresa, “Writing for International Security: A Contributor’s Guide.” International Security 16, no. 2 (Fall 1991).

Final Presentation

Aim to make around four slides. I suggest (a) a slide to frame the issue and identify the key questions; (b) a slide describing your method of analysis; (c) your key analytical findings from the analysis; and (d) your key conclusions for the social issue and suggestions for future study.

Plan to speak for about eight minutes—that’s just two minutes per slide. You’ll need to practice being concise!