Sweden Launches Probe of Nuclear Weapons Report

The Swedish government Friday denied it has joined the ranks of nuclear powers and began an investigation into charges the military defied Parliament by secretly conducting nuclear weapons research.

Reports of Sweden being in possession of nuclear weapons are “utterly false,” Defense Minister Anders Thunborg said in a statement.

Thunborg added, “The Swedish government and the Swedish Parliament have taken an absolutely firm stand not to produce nuclear arms.”

Sweden’s Defense Research Authority confirmed it set off 10 explosions involving plutonium in 1972 but said they were part of an experiment on the effects of conventional explosives on plutonium. It said the plutonium itself was not detonated.

Thunborg named Defense Ministry senior law expert Olof Forssberg to investigate what has come to be known as “the atomic scandal.”

The scandal was sparked by a report in Ny Teknik, a technical news magazine, that charged the government and military secretly engaged in nuclear research in violation of a 1957 moratorium imposed by Parliament.

Ny Teknik said Sweden made secret plans to produce 10 atomic bombs each year--each with the explosive capacity of the one that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945.

The Defense Research Authority said Friday that 10 experimental explosions involving plutonium were carried out in 1972 but only as part of government-approved research into ways to protect the nation against nuclear weapons.