ABSTRACT
During the 1970s, reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel was promoted by nuclear industries on a large scale with the promise of countering alleged global uranium scarcities and of reducing the amount of high-level radioactive waste in need of storage. Yet, while the one turned out to be obsolete and the other not realizable, nuclear weapons states continued with commercial reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel which in addition to uranium also contains plutonium. With Sweden sending its spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing purposes to Britain and France during the 1970s and 1980s, Scandinavian anti-nuclear movements also moved reprocessing technologies into their spotlight around the time of the Euromissiles crisis. This chapter aims at exploring the different tensions—which at the same time presented opportunities for cooperation—concerning nuclear waste and reprocessing technologies: between disarmament and anti-nuclear movements, between non-proliferation and energy policies, between the local and the international, but also between different Scandinavian countries. As a case that highlights the entwined dual uses of nuclear technologies, the chapter provides an insight into Scandinavian civil society engagement with reprocessing as an issue of environmental and nuclear disarmament policies.
