ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the value systems of societies and describes how their configurations in Sweden in 1980 influenced the referendum on nuclear energy. It considers nuclear energy and the referendum in the light of party politics. The chapter presents the formation of public opinion during the campaign that preceded the referendum. The first official investigation of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in Sweden got under way in 1945. Nuclear energy seemed to be a most promising technological achievement that would provide cheap and ample fuel supplies. The decision makers who introduced nuclear energy into Sweden viewed it primarily as an economical alternative or complement to water power, coal, and oil. The value systems that are the expressions of dominant motivations—"the vocabularies of motives," to use C Wright Mill's term—can roughly divide into three categories: The Values of Sustenance; The Values of Production and The Values of Reproduction.
