Joseba De la Torre’s research while affiliated with Public University of Navarre and other places

Purpose This study aims to examine how the nuclear energy issue was used for advertising purposes at the dawn of the atomic era in Spain. Design/methodology/approach Newspapers and magazines from the atomic era were reviewed to assess the impact of nuclear energy on advertising campaigns for all kinds of unrelated products. This study interprets the message and information contained in several marketing campaigns from the detonation of the first nuclear bomb in 1945 until the inauguration of the first nuclear facility in Spain in 1968. Findings Private companies leapt at the chance to use the new technology, with its promises of a brighter future, to promote their products, including watches, Venetian blinds, anisette, chocolates, pencils and fountain pens, spa resorts, books and encyclopaedias, laundry detergents, pressure cookers, concentrate feeds and hair restorers. This study makes a major contribution to the history of marketing literature, focusing on nuclear energy as an influential agent in industry, advertising agencies and popular culture. It shows how advertising campaigns used terms such as “nuclear”, “atomic” and “atomic bomb” and images of mushroom clouds or atom symbols to denote modernity and allure and explores how government policies – in this case, concerning nuclear energy – can influence marketers and advertisers. Originality/value The paper’s originality stems from its analysis of Spanish advertisements to explore marketing history through the terms and imagery associated with nuclear energy and its industry. It further contributes to the understanding of how nuclear energy is represented and conceptualised for various purposes in popular culture.

Nuclear energy was one among business opportunities brought by the take off in science and technology after the Second World War. The narratives of the milestones of atomic history neglect the commercial, industrial and organizational aspects that made it possible. This paper concentrates on what makes the nuclear business exceptional (or not). We undertake an analysis of the nuclear supply business (designing, manufacturing and installing nuclear facilities) distinct from the analysis of the demand side (business operating nuclear power plants). We identify a continuing role of the state in civil nuclear businesses and a symbiotic relationship with private atomic business. And yet, for the most part the nuclear business applies the usual criteria of cost minimization and profit maximization within the boundaries of a non-perfectly competitive market. We argue that the development of civil nuclear projects is core not just to business history as a discipline but to post-war history.

We analysed the process of construction and connection to the electrical grid of four Spanish nuclear power plants with different financial and technological foreign partners: those of Zorita (PWR by Westinghouse), Garoña (BWR by General Electric) and Vandellós I (GCR by EDF) (belonging to the first generation of atomic plants and producing electricity from 1969–72) and that of Trillo I (PWR by KWU, connected in 1988). These four examples allow us to observe how the learning curve of nuclear engineering and the acquisition of skills by Spanish companies evolved. Progressively the domestic industry achieved higher levels of participation, fostered by the Ministry of Industry and Energy. When the atomic plants under construction were paralysed by the nuclear moratorium of 1984, and several other projects were abandoned by the utilities along the way, Spain had developed an industrial sector around the fabrication of service components and engineering for nuclear power plants to compete internationally.

This article is focused on nuclear transboundary issues between Portugal and Spain, two countries that share a long history of nuclear collaboration and conflict of late, where national borders played a crucial role. The issues at stake cover the full spectrum of the nuclear cycle: uranium mining, power production and waste disposal. The first stage, under two fascist dictatorships, was characterised by collaboration within a common techno-political imaginary, where nuclear energy was understood as a driver of modernity, but with the absence of the public in decision-making processes. The second stage was marked by the advent of democracy in both countries and the reconfiguration of nuclear policies: while Portugal abandoned the nuclear endeavour, Spain implemented a nuclear moratorium but kept ten reactors operative. The third phase, which started in 1986 and goes until the present time, was marked by two crucial events: joining the European Communities (EC) and the Chernobyl accident. The first event allowed Brussels to become a referee on Spanish/Portuguese nuclear disputes. The second one implied that Portugal expanded its institutional vigilance on Spanish nuclear activities and led to the emergence of transboundary social movements against nuclear power.

The unique nature of the technological, financial and managerial decisions of the civil uses of nuclear power granted a leading role to engineers and scientists employed by the state and private companies in the USA, West Germany and the UK. But in less-developed countries too, such as Spain, the nuclear programme was started and influenced by a small group of engineers and scientists who operated as agents of economic modernization in the decision-making framework of a dictatorship. Making use of new archival sources, this chapter identifies three of these actors: two Spanish industrial engineers and executive directors, Jaime MacVeigh and Manuel Gutiérrez-Cortines, and the German scientist Karl Wirtz as facilitator. These three players performed strategic roles in the Spanish nuclear programme.

In the nuclear sector, turnkey projects can be considered an investment in obtaining information through “learning by doing” to capture rents from the next generation of reactors. As the first U.S. turnkey export project, the first Spanish nuclear power plant served that purpose and paved the way for the subsequent growth of the nuclear sector, for both Spanish and U.S. firms. Making use of archival material, we analyze the networks created by the government, experts, and business leaders, which sought to obtain, accumulate, and learn from the scarce and conflicting information about atomic technology that was available at the time. We also discern how firms on both sides of the Atlantic acquired and perfected the specific capabilities required to build a commercial nuclear reactor.

This article explores the learning and technology transfer processes that placed Spain among the firstcomers of nuclear energy in the late 1960s. It is an example of a infantindustry that, under the protection of the State and the action of the business consortiums and of the North American multinationals, was able to replicate a complex technological challenge. We analyzed how an entrepreneurial ecosystem was created in which the leadership of some engineers and the cooperation and competition between industries, engineering and consultants were key. The business history of the Zorita and Garoña nuclear power plants exemplifies a model of learning by doing that, through turnkey contracts, allowed a rapid growth of the sector, convincing the dictatorship government and the electric promoters that it was possible to carry out one of the most ambitious nuclear programs in Western Europe. © 2018, Department of Economic History and Institutions, Policy and World Economy. All rights reserved.

La energía nuclear es una tecnología compleja, que requiere un uso muy intensivo de recursos y una toma de decisiones muy centralizada, cuya gobernanza supone un auténtico reto para las sociedades democráticas. En el presente artículo se exploran las percepciones sociales sobre la energía nuclear en España a partir de un análisis de encuestas de opinión y de los argumentos de actores de tres estudios de caso (Vandellós I, Valdecaballeros y ATC). Los resultados muestran cómo las argumentaciones de unos y otros actores se basan en diferentes dimensiones del riesgo, a menudo ignoradas en las encuestas y por varios de los actores, lo cual supone una seria dificultad para superar las controversias suscitadas por este tipo de energía.

In 1964, the leading Spanish electricity companies began an ambitious project to construct nuclear power plants. Twenty years later, Spain was one of the most nuclear countries in the world. For facilitating quick adoption of one of the most cutting-edge technologies of the post-war world, it was vital to secure government support for private companies and the transfer of US expertise and financial credit, encourage the emergence of a local capital equipment industry and engineering services, and train experts and operators.

This chapter offers a global overview synthetizing the macro-economic and political developments on which the nuclear programs rooted around the world, from the Golden age and until after the two oil crises. Most nuclear programs started and grew during the Golden Age, but slowed down in the mist of the economic crisis of the 1970s. A technology that aspired to become the perennial fountain of world’s prosperity was adopted by a little more than 30 of the almost 200 nations of the world. And it was a decision taken (or not) well before any major accident took place. May be because the atomic choice had more economic policy implications than just the average pick of an energy technology over another to meet future electricity demands. This background helps to contextualize the Spanish case within these worldwide dynamics, offering the key elements to build a comparative history, and some initial indications about the true dimensions of the Spanish nuclear program.