Interaktionen mellan naturvetenskap, militär och politik inom det svenska kärnvapenprogrammet 1959-1961: En studie om FOA:s hantering av ett exploderande forskningsfält
2025 (Swedish)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
From 1938 to 1961 the technological advancements within the field of nuclear weapons led to the filed going from a purely theoretical stage to detonating a weapon that is believed to have been equal to roughly 2800 times the TNT-equivalents of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. These advancements did not go unnoticed, and several smaller states attempted to acquire their own nuclear weapons. Sweden was one of those states. But to acquire these new weapons was no easy task. To overcome the hurdles of a highly technical field states had to combine political will, the necessary resources and technical expertise which inevitably caused friction between different professions. Several books and articles have been written about how Sweden attempted to overcome these frictions, and they often revolve around subjects such as the dual use of research between civil nuclear power and nuclear weapons, something that became known as “the Swedish line”. Discussions in the existing literature often deals with political, economical, and technical issues, but tends to be somewhat contradictory when it comes to answering questions about if and when the civil and military research fields were no longer dual use. However, these discussions have rarely taken the results produced by the organisation that was given the mission to build the devices into account, the Swedish National Defence Research Institute (FOA). The purpose of this paper is to try to fill a part of that gap by studying both the reports that were produced by the researchers at FOA and the board meeting protocols, which are accounts of meetings between mainly researchers and military officials, during the period between 1959 and 1961. This is done by applying a qualitative textual analysis focusing on terms related to fission and fusion. Even though the conclusions are limited due to the secrecy surrounding the subject and the limited knowledge this student possesses regarding advanced nuclear physics the research papers from FOA and the board meeting protocols do seem to indicate a key difference of opinion between the military and the physicists. Since Sweden was a small nation with a limited budget resources were limited, but with the field of nuclear weapons expanding in scope resources often became a point of contention between different members of the board. In these discussion it seems as though the military tended to prefer planning while the physicists seemed to prefer a more dynamic approach to resource allocation.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. , p. 45
Keywords [sv]
Svenska kärnvapenprogrammet, FOA, dubbelanvändning, schism, skyddsforskning, konstruktionsforskning
National Category
History
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-13613OAI: oai:DiVA.org:fhs-13613DiVA, id: diva2:1949320
Subject / course
Militärhistoria
Educational program
Swedish Defence University’s Bachelor Program
Uppsok
Social and Behavioural Science, Law
Supervisors
Examiners
2025-04-022025-04-022025-04-02Bibliographically approved