European Utilities Agree to Decommissioning Partnership

Swedish energy company Vattenfall has partnered with German-based E.ON to decommission and dismantle their joint nuclear power plants, the two companies announced late last week. Following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, Germany moved to shut down all of its nuclear plants in an effort to avoid any future accidents. Eight nuclear reactors were permanently shut down in March 2011, and 17 are planned to be phased out by 2022. Four of those plants were jointly owned by the two companies. E.ON has previous experience  decommissioning  a plant, and it has led the exchange of experts between the two companies. According to a release, “Subject of the cooperation agreement is the joint development and use of concepts such as deconstruction for the dismantling of large components and logistics, waste treatment or disposal. The expertise acquired by the post-operational phase and dismantling should not only be continuously exchanged between the partners, but also updated.”