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During the 20th century Sweden had programs for both nuclear and chemical weapons. During the first decades of the Cold War a nuclear weapon program was active. No weapon was ever deployed and in the 1960s the political landscape and budgetary problems questioned the use of these weapons and by the mid 1970s all plans for weapons of mass destruction had been scrapped.
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Sweden's nuclear weapon program was started after World War II and the American nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In the early years after the war Sweden made a decision to become a neutral power that could defend itself militarily against any invading power. The biggest threats to Sweden were Soviet nuclear capabilities and in the late 1940s and 1950s much research was made into nuclear weapons.
In 1948 the first solid plans on how to create an atomic weapon was presented to the FOI ("Totalförsvarets Forskningsinstitut", Swedish Defence Research Agency). Plans were established to run a civilian nuclear power program in parallel, using domestic uranium resources as nuclear fuel. The Ågesta and Marviken reactors were supposed to produce plutonium for the weapons, while also producing energy. The Saab 36 was a planned attack aircraft that would be able to deliver nuclear weapons, and later on, submarines and aircraft like the Lansen and ultimately Viggen were considered as means of delivery as well.
All of the nuclear development activities took place at the FOI. The plan was to produce 100 warheads in a timespan of ten years.[1]
During the 1960s it was still not clear if Sweden should develop a nuclear weapon capacity. By the end of the 1960s the Swedish government, because of military budget constraints, had to choose between a nuclear weapon or a new fighter aircraft (the Saab 37 Viggen). The choice fell with the new fighter. All the plans for a Swedish nuclear weapon were scrapped by 1968, when Sweden signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 1972 the last remnants of a plan for nuclear weapons was discontinued when the FoA stopped their experiments with plutonium.
Sweden did, however, continue with civilian nuclear power and today (2011) Sweden has 10 active nuclear reactors.
After World War I Sweden started researching on chemical weapons. In the 1930s Sweden's first chemical weapon program was born when developing and equipment research for sulfur mustards (mustard gas) was started. In 1940 work on the gas was temporarily halted, but by the end of World War II new programs were soon a priority for the Swedish military. Programs for both sulfur mustards and sarin gas were initiated.
In the 1960s the development of chemical weapons was highly criticized and in 1970 the Swedish government stated that it would not develop or produce any more chemical weapons.[2] In 1994 Sweden signed the Chemical Weapons Convention that forbids development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons.[3]