RWE, EON Keep U.K. Reactor Spending After German Nuclear Ban via Bloomberg Businessweek

Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) — RWE AG and EON AG are pressing ahead with plans to build new reactors in the U.K. after the German government ordered the closure of nuclear plants at home.

“We are still recruiting people and spending almost a million pounds ($1.54 million) every single week,” Volker Beckers, chief executive officer of RWE’s U.K. Npower division, said in an interview in Bloomberg’s London bureau.

Germany’s largest power producers are two of the six utilities planning to build nuclear plants in the U.K. Their Horizon venture has secured two sites in Wales and the west of England with the goal of starting construction of the first reactor by 2015. A public backlash in Germany following the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant prompted the government to announce plans to close all its reactors.

“In Germany, a big proportion is against nuclear power stations, while here you see an increase in acceptance,” Beckers said. “For an investor it’s key you invest into a country where you have a supportive framework: political, commercial and social. I do see this in the U.K.”

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