For those of you who didn't know, the Swedish military, with tacit support from the civilian government, tried to develop atomic weapons. The plan was to make about 20 small plutonium bombs (think Fat Man, and you'll have a rough idea of what we're talking) to use as defensive measures against a possible Soviet attack. However, a combination of design flaws (for example, the critical mass of plutonium was hideously overestimated), waning political support and (in the '60s) anti-nuclear feelings among the general public led to the project getting mothballed, and with the signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by Sweden in 1968 the plans were abandoned altogether.
Now, the logical thing that follows is to ask: what if the project had succeeded? What if a small neutral country, which was nowhere near a great power, developed nuclear weapons? What would international reactions look like, and what would other neutral nations and nations attempting to be neutral (de Gaulle's France comes to mind) take this for? What would be the reactions of the US and the USSR?
And last but not least, how could the program succeed? It was fairly popular at least in political circles, but the program had some fatal flaws (the reactor that was supposed to provide plutonium was very badly designed, and then there was the previously mentioned critical mass calculation error), and I don't know whether it could actually have ended successfully even if it had been allowed to continue. What are your opinions on this?
Now, the logical thing that follows is to ask: what if the project had succeeded? What if a small neutral country, which was nowhere near a great power, developed nuclear weapons? What would international reactions look like, and what would other neutral nations and nations attempting to be neutral (de Gaulle's France comes to mind) take this for? What would be the reactions of the US and the USSR?
And last but not least, how could the program succeed? It was fairly popular at least in political circles, but the program had some fatal flaws (the reactor that was supposed to provide plutonium was very badly designed, and then there was the previously mentioned critical mass calculation error), and I don't know whether it could actually have ended successfully even if it had been allowed to continue. What are your opinions on this?