FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German utility E.ON (DE:EONGn) is open to talks with the government about forming a public foundation to fund the decommissioning of the country's nuclear plants, its chief executive told a German magazine.
Sources told Reuters in May that utilities and the government were in talks about handing responsibility for dismantling the plants to a 'bad bank' for nuclear energy to meet a 2022 deadline set by the government after the Fukushima disaster in Japan three years ago.
"If the government came to this conclusion tomorrow ... we wouldn't refuse to enter such a discussion," E.ON's Johannes Teyssen told Der Spiegel in an interview published on Sunday. "But so far we haven't received an invitation."
The four nuclear operators in Germany -- E.ON, RWE (DE:RWEG), EnBW
Teyssen's comments follow E.ON's decision a week ago to spin off its thermal power plants, raising fears that German taxpayers may end up footing a portion of the multibillion-euro bill for closing down nuclear plants.
The company said that the roughly 14.5 billion euros in provisions it made for nuclear dismantling would move to the new entity, which will mainly consist of ailing coal, gas and nuclear power plants.
Germany's utilities have filed several lawsuits connected to the country's energy policy, most notably against its decision to shut down all nuclear reactors by 2022.
E.ON has said it is suing for 8 billion euros, while RWE is seeking more than 2 billion euros, according to sources familiar with the matter. Vattenfall is claiming 4.7 billion euros, a German government source said in October.
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by David Goodman)