Kärnkraftverkets poetik : Begreppsliggöranden av svenska kärnkraftverk 1965–1973

Sammanfattning: The first Swedish commercial nuclear power plant was ordered in 1965. By 1973 it had been inaugurated, and building work had begun on the remaining three facilities that became the locations of Swedish large-scale nuclear power production. This thesis explores what kind of architectural objects, in a broad sense, the nuclear power plants in Sweden was discursively constructed as during these years. During the post war years enormous expectations were in Swedish politics attached to the implementation of nuclear power technology. An important discursive figure was that energy was of fundamental importance to society. Simultaneously it was articulated that nuclear power would provide an unlimited supply of energy. Society therefore was on the verge to a completely new era, an era which was to materialize through the nuclear power plant. Drawing upon Norman Fairclough’s theorization of discourse, three different orders of discourse are delineated wherein the nuclear power plant during the period 1965–1973 could be conceptualized as building: a discourse order of architecture, of landscape and of cultural heritage. It is a question of what sort of collective identity that is constructed through the utterances on nuclear power plants. Through the orders of discourse not only objects are produced, but also a who, on a collective level, that is producing them. These orders of discourse are connected to three different specific modes of temporal orientation which are formative for collective identity: towards the future, the past, and a position outside of history. Through an analysis of utterances and narratives in magazines, official texts, films, etc., this examination shows that in contrast to an international context, the nuclear power plant in Sweden was almost completely negated within the discourse order of architecture. Instead it was within the discourse orders of landscape and of cultural heritage that the nuclear power plant was to be conceptualized.