collapsedsquid:

The program’s origins actually began just weeks after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and in mid-August the Swedish National Defence Research Establishment (FOA) requested an account of what was known about the American weapon. In November of that year the Atomic Committee (Atomkommitten, AC) was founded, and it served as an advisory committee of experts with a mission to work out the plans and prioritize alternative pathways for the development of civilian nuclear energy.

Development continued and by the 1950s the Swedes had reached a point where underground testing could take place. The national parliament, the Riksdag, actively prohibited research and development (R&D) of nuclear weapons and that any research was only to be done in the purpose of defense against a nuclear attack.

In 1962 the Nuclear Device Group, a secret review board, released a study that found that nuclear weapons need not only be used for the purpose of causing massive devastation but could be used on a smaller scale. The report added that the Swedish nuclear weapons remained a viable option.

What likely kept the Swedish military from acquiring a bomb was the fact that a delay in civilian nuclear energy pushed back the expected date from 1966 to 1972.

Cold War where the First and Second Worlds aren’t as big and there’s more of a nonaligned sphere with Sweden/South Africa/Israel as a troika of minor nuclear powers