Nuclear mattersSiemens exits nuclear power industry
Siemens, the largest engineering conglomerate in Europe, and the company which built all of Germany’s seventeen nuclear power plants, said Sunday it was existing the nuclear power generation market; Peter Löscher, the chief executive of the Munich-based conglomerate, said: “The [nuclear] chapter for us is closed”
Growth of nuclear power declines sharply after Fukushima // Source: 21stcenturywire.com
Siemens, the largest engineering conglomerate in Europe, said Sunday that following the German government’s decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022, the company would stop building nuclear power plants anywhere in the world.
“Das Kapitel ist für uns abgeschlossen” (“The chapter for us is closed”), Peter Löscher, the chief executive of the Munich-based conglomerate, said in an interview with Der Spiegel. He emphasized the company’s commitment to the rapidly growing renewable energy sector. He said the decision was also “an answer” to political and social opposition to nuclear power in Germany.
World Nuclear News reports that Siemens, which built all of Germany’s seventeen nuclear power plants, is the first big company to announce such a shift in strategy. Other German companies involved in the nuclear energy industry are also reconsidering their options.
The energy division is Siemens’s second-largest in terms of revenue. Last year, the conglomerate had total revenue of €76 billion ($105 billion), and net income of €4.1 billion. Of that, the energy division contributed €3.6 billion.
