Kristoffer Berglund

Main research areas

• Sustainability and sustainable transitions
• Sociology of knowledge

Current research

Kristoffer's research project takes an interest in the process of the rise, fall, and rise again of Swedish nuclear power by elucidating its expression in knowledge development. Even if the phaseout and the current renaissance are both political in nature, the political sphere must relate to and legitimize itself through reference to developments in the field of knowledge. For example, the energy minister today often says that it is the laws of physics that are meriting the nuclear renaissance, physics before politics, as it is sometimes said. Within the project, knowledge is understood both as the knowledge which the technological system builds upon – i.e. nuclear physics and engineering needed to operate a reactor, but also the surrounding knowledges needed to govern the energy system, the role of nuclear power in it, the alternatives and other ways of creating an energy system, nuclear waste and nuclear power's relationship to sustainability. With this as the point of departure, the project seeks to understand how the changes in the Swedish nuclear trajectory have played out in terms of the knowledge development over time, the dynamics between different types of knowledges, and how these have figured in the process to 1) establish the phaseout; 2) to carry out the phaseout; 3) to maintain the momentum of the phaseout; 4) to stop the momentum of the phaseout and 5) to create the foundations for nuclear expansion once again.

This research interest is understood through the light of knowledge societies. Even if research has given this concept a plethora of different meanings, the basic insight is that contemporary societies rest upon the explicit development and application of knowledge to a historically unprecedented extent. This has broken the continuity with previous societies, as contemporary societies change in a drastic pace which can be understood as bolstered by the twin forces of economic development and specialized knowledge development. It is increasingly recognized that this comes with unintended consequences.

What these challenges have brought to light is that innovation and new creations are not enough – side by side with innovations assumed to ameliorate modern problems, old technologies and systems persist, with their corresponding effects of e.g. carbon emissions, pollution and other "negative externalities". Fundamental to a sustainable transition, then, is the need to also phase-out, discontinue and de-institutionalize technologies, systems, and institutions. History contains lots of examples of civilizational collapse, but contemporary issues point to a new problem: to power and manage declines by our own volition. For such processes we have limited precedent and understanding. The Swedish nuclear phase-out offers one example for studying how a knowledge society proactively proceeds to (try to) phase something out – an unusual and important process for our times.