The Gary Null Blog

Published on Monday, September 19, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/19-0

by Karl Grossman

The just-announced decision by Siemens, a major player in the nuclear industry, to withdraw entirely from nuclear power is a significant declaration by a corporation about nuclear power and the world’s potential energy future

“The chapter is closed for us,” Peter Loescher, chief executive of the Germany-based engineering group, said Sunday. “We are no longer going to participate in taking responsibility for building nuclear power stations or financing them.”

The Siemens decision follows that of the German government to, with the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant complex, abandon nuclear power­ to close the nation’s 17 nuclear plants, all of which were built by Siemens­ and pursue instead safe, clean, renewable energy led by solar, wind and geothermal.

It comes after Loescher saying, when a deal was struck in 2009 for a joint venture with Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear company, that Siemens would become a “market leader in nuclear energy” challenging General Electric, Westinghouse and Areva.