Institutional Review Board
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Guidelines for Proposal Submission
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Please submit an electronic copy of the application to irb@rpi.edu. Your proposal should not exceed
five (5) pages.
If the proposal is from a student, the proposal must include a memo from the research adviser which
indicates that he/she has read and approved the proposal.
Students can be used in classroom research as long as participation is voluntary, would not affect the
student’s grade (+ or -), and anonymity is guaranteed. The students cannot be in the research
professor’s class for research studies, in order to eliminate any indirect coercion. A statement to that
effect should be included in the proposal.
Informed consent form should be written at the 8th grade reading level (lower level if for children) and
be available in the participant’s native language.
The consent form should also include contact information for the researcher, student adviser if
applicable, and the IRB Chair, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th St., Troy, NY 12180;
irb@rpi.edu.
If you foresee any complications and would like help preparing this proposal for IRB review, please
email irb@rpi.edu to be put in touch with an IRB member.
Please fill in the following:
Title of Proposal:
Research)
Risk, Nuclear Technologies, and Intergenerational Ethics (Preliminary Dissertation
Researcher:
Pedro de la Torre III
Department:
Science and Technology Studies
Campus Address:
Sage 5704
Email:
delatp@rpi.edu
Phone:
281-468-3764
Research Adviser (for students):
Kim Fortun
Attach letter of support from Adviser if applicable.
Is this proposal related to a sponsored project?
If yes, please indicate:
( ) Yes
( X ) No
( ) Existing Award – Fund #________________________
( X ) New Proposal
All investigators on this project, including faculty supervisors, must complete the self-study course
on protection of human research subjects. All post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduates
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supported on NSF-funded projects are required to take the appropriate Responsible Conduct of
Research (RCR) course for their discipline.
For more information, please visit the IRB website for IRB Training Requirements.
Electronic Certification (add additional lines if required):
By entering my name below, I certify that I have completed the course:
Name
Date Completed
Pedro de la Torre III
09/26/2012
Summary:
This study is connected to Readings in STSS course (26594) with Dr. Kim Fortun, and will serve as
preliminary research for my dissertation. In addition to readings, the course will include in-person, phone,
and Skype interviews with various experts and activist involved in debates or risk assessment about
nuclear technologies. I hope to learn more about the construction, deployment, and contestation of
different constructions of risk in relation to relevant technological disasters, radioactive contamination,
and the disposal of radioactive waste. How intergenerational ethics (or politics) are implicated, created,
and negotiated in these risk discourses will be a central concern of the study, as will the changing
landscape of “risk management,” “risk perception,” and “risk calculation” in the long tail of the
Fukushima triple disaster.
For most interview subjects, I will be attempting to learn more about the different ways the risk is
constructed in their fields of expertise, movements, or communities, how these constructions of risk have
changed over time (especially in relation to various disasters or controversies), and how they see different
understandings of risk impacting debates about nuclear technologies. There are four general “types” of
subjects I will be attempting to contact:
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Key players in various social movements dealing with nuclear disasters and radioactive
waste in the U.S.
Those who are or have been involved in the nuclear power industry and the agencies that
regulate it
Those involved in local, state, or tribal governments where radioactive waste/disaster sites
potentially or currently exist
Scientist and other experts involved in the quantification of risk for related technologies
(e.g., geologists involved in assessing the safety of other forms of geological sequestration)
Legal theorists and others who have advocated for ways of institutionalizing an
intergenerational ethics
Objective: These interviews will help orient me to my field of study; allow me to begin creating an
“archive” of useful, empirical material; and serve as “first contact” for what will hopefully be a longer
engagement with the informants as I begin work on my dissertation.
Methods: Subjects will asked to participate in interviews ranging from forty-five minutes to two hours.
While the topics covered in each interview are expected to vary substantially with each subject, a list of
questions is included below in order to give the Institutional Review Board some idea of how these
interviews will proceed.
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Effects on Subjects: There will be little to no physical risk for subjects, and the topics covered in the
interviews are unlikely to be damaging to the subject’s reputation or cause significant psychological
distress.
Measures to Minimize Risk: All interviews will be voluntary. Interviewees will be given the opportunity
to be anonymous, to stop the interview at any point, or to retract the interview or parts of it before
publication.
All handwritten notes taken during the interview will be transcribed in digital format, then
destroyed. Digitally transcribed interviews and digital audio/visual recordings will be password encrypted
and stored on my personal computer. If an interviewee disagrees to have his or her interview material
shared with others, then only I will have access to the restricted material. All copies of the interview
(recorded and transcribed) in my possession will be destroyed at any time on the request of the
interviewee. The material (transcribed interviews, audio/visual recordings, and photographs) will be kept
for no longer than 15 years, which represents a typical life span for an anthropological research project
(from initial contact with interlocutors, to book contract, and subsequent publications). After this period,
the material will be erased from all digital sources.
This procedure is detailed in the attached informed consent form for interviews, and will be
modified in respect to the choices initialed by the interviewees.
Likelihood of Harm: Minimal.
Documentation of Risks: None.
Benefits to Participants: No compensation will be offered to subjects, and no direct, tangible benefits for
subject are expected.
Alternate Method Not Using Human Subjects: None.
Qualifications of Researcher: Pedro de la Torre III has completed a Masters’ Degree in Anthropology at
the New School for Social Research, and a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Texas-Austin.
Recruiting of Subjects: Interlocutors will be contacted directly, informed of the purposes of the
interview, and given the opportunity to refuse the interview. As this is not a demographic project, subjects
will be recruited based on their experience or position in debates about nuclear technology, or their
expertise in related issues.
Confidentiality: The participants will be given the opportunity to define the extent to which their names
will be associated with any (or all) statement(s) during the interview, and will be given the right to retract
any statement at any time prior to publication of research results. Any statements that participants
designate as “off the record” will not be attributed to the participant, nor used in a way that would link
their statement to said participant. As is codified in the Informed Consent Form, I will use any such
comments only as background information, and will not quote them in either an attributed or unattributed
fashion in any of my future work.
Interview Questions: Preliminary interview guide attached.
Informed Consent Form: Attached.
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PRELIMINARY INTERVIEW GUIDE
The questions are meant to be starting points for participants to speak of their experience or opinions, and
are examples of the kinds of questions that will be asked. As such, these questions could lead to further
questions that are relevant to the research objective. As these questions cannot be determined in advance,
I will remind participants that they are free to refuse to answer any question. Finally, unique questions
will be formulated for each subject, so the questions below should be seen as representing the kinds of
topics that will be covered.
Aim 1: To understand how risk is constructed or understood in relation to nuclear technologies and radioactive wastes.
Q1. What is the best way to understand Does this method of understanding risk have any weaknesses or blind spots, such as
and compare risks in relation to nuclear high impact, low probability events?
power/ radioactive waste?
What kinds of uncertainty does this way of understanding risk?
What specific factors are included in your understanding of nuclear risk (i.e., does it
include accidents? Sabotage? Risks involved in transporting radioactive materials?)
Q2. What do you think of other ways of
understanding the risks that nuclear
technologies and radioactive waste
present?
Do you think that we should primarily rely on quantitative risk assessments, or are
there other frameworks that should be used instead or in addition to these
assessments?
Why do others (those in the nuclear industry, regulators, anti-nuclear social
movements, etc.) understand these risks the way that they do?
Aim 2: To understand how different understandings of risk take into account intergenerational ethics
Q1. What are the risks involved with Do the models of risk that you use have a “timeframe?”
nuclear technologies and radioactive How do you understand what risks to future generations are, given the uncertainty
wastes when it comes to future involved (especially when it comes to the long-term disposal of radioactive wastes?
generations?
How do you weigh the potential of harm in the medium to long term, vs. the
potential of harm in the short term?
What are our responsibilities to future generations?
Q2. How can concerns about How are these concerns currently dealt with in your organization/company/field?
intergenerational
ethics
be How do regulators and regulations deal with this issue?
institutionalized (or be made to matter in
some other way) in debates about nuclear
risk?
Aim 3: To understand the history and relationships important to shaping contemporary debates about nuclear
technology, risk and intergenerational ethics
Q1. What has your involvement been in When did you become involved in (organization/field/industry/movement)?
debates about nuclear technology and What are the biggest challenges that you have faced in your efforts?
waste disposal?
How have coalitions of actors involved in these debates changed over the years?
How have disasters like Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, etc. affected your
work? How have they changed the debate? How have the changed the sciences
involved in radioactive waste disposal or risk assessments of nuclear technology?
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INFORMED CONSENT FORM
Preliminary Dissertation Research on Risk, Intergenerational Ethics, and Nuclear Technology
Pedro de la Torre III, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Troy, NY 12180, delatp@rpi.edu, 281-468-3764, Skype: pedlt3.
Contact information for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Review Board:
Chair, Institutional Review Board, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, CII 9015, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY
12180, irb@rpi.edu, 518-276-4873.
I, _____________________________________, agree to be interviewed as part of a study on
risk, nuclear technology, and intergenerational ethics, led by Pedro de la Torre III (“the researcher”)
connected with an independent study course with Dr. Kim Fortun. The research will result in one or more
of the following: public talks, a dissertation, articles, and a book.
If I consent, the interview will be recorded on digital audio/visual files, and may be quoted in
publications. Below, I indicate which forms of recording and use I agree to using my initials:
I agree to be audio recorded. ______
I agree to be video recorded. ______
I agree to have quoted excerpts from the interview used in written publications. ______
I agree to have all or parts of the audio recordings available to students, scholars, journalists, and others
interested in the material for their own projects. ______
I agree to have the visual recording available to students, scholars, journalists, and others interested in the
material for their own projects. ______
I also recognize the following conditions:
1. I can ask that the audio or visual recorder be turned off at any time during the interview, and
the recorder will be turned off.
2. During the interview, I can designate any comment I make as “off the record” and these
comments will be excised from the audio and visual recording.
3. I will be sent a copy of or link to any publication in which I am quoted.
4. I can ask that my name not be attached to quotes or to audio recording segments by initialing
here ______. This means that your any visual recording will never be made public.
5. In the future, I can ask for all or parts of any recordings from this or future interviews with the
researcher to be destroyed. I acknowledge that I will not be able to retract anything that is already
in print or in press at the time I submit a retraction request.
6. I can ask for additional conditions, and have listed these below:
INTERVIEWER
DATE
INTERVIEWEE
INTERVIEWEE CONTACT INFORMATION:_________________________________
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