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Siemens to withdraw entirely from nuclear industry

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German engineering and industrial giant Siemens will withdraw entirely from the nuclear business in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March this year, chief executive Peter Loescher said in an interview with Spiegel magazine.

German engineering and industrial giant Siemens will withdraw entirely from the nuclear business in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March this year, chief executive Peter Loescher said in an interview with Spiegel magazine.

"The chapter for us is closed," Loescher told the magazine.

Loescher said the decision was the firm's answer to "the clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced in late May that all of the country's 17 nuclear reactors would be shut down by 2022 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Before the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power accounted for about a quarter of Germany's electricity output.

Loescher said that a long-planned joint venture with Russian state-run civilian nuclear power corporation Rosatom would also be cancelled, although Siemens would seek to work with their partners in other fields.

He said that Siemens would still make components, such as steam turbines that are used in the conventional nuclear power industry, apart from their use in nuclear plants.

The March 11 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami in Japan triggered a number of explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, causing the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.

 

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