Inventing traditions: interests, parables and nostalgia in the history of nuclear energy

Abstract

From the late 1960s on, light-water designs dominated the market for nuclear reactors in most Western countries. Up to that point in time, many national governments, scientists and industrialists had favoured the rival concepts of heavy-water and graphite-moderated plants. The article focuses on Sweden and West Germany, where central actors only reluctantly gave up their support for domestically developed heavy-water solutions. Studying new archival material and adopting Hobsbawm and Ranger’s concept of the ‘invention of tradition’, the authors analyze how contemporary actors mobilized both the nation and the past when arguing for plants using natural uranium and heavy water. The paper documents how autarkic arguments were superseded by nostalgic sentiments, and how-subsequently-historians have come to perpetuate apologetic parables like ‘Swedish line’ and ‘tradition’, respectively.