Rolls-Royce may focus on nuclear after selling turbomachinery business to Siemens

Rolls-Royce's chief financial officer Mark Morris has been quoted in the media as saying that the company will focus on its nuclear activities. In October, R-R brought inMark Lesinski as president of its nuclear service business to accelerate further growth across the global nuclear services market.

Based in Rochester, NY, Mark will be responsible for the strategic direction and global expansion of Rolls-Royce nuclear services business. Mark has over 37 years' experience across the nuclear lifecycle spanning operational plant through to decommissioning. Recently he was the chief operation officer at UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

Last September, Rolls-Royce was awarded a nuclear engineering services contract by Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear company. In a separate agreement, Rolls-Royce announced that it will collaborate with Rosatom and Finnish nuclear utility company Fortum on an initial project to assess the feasibility of introducing Russian 'Generation III+ VVER' nuclear reactor technology to the UK new build market. 

Meanwhile, Finnish power company Fortum said Wednesday it had terminated a contract with Areva and Siemens to modernize a nuclear plant in the southern town of Loviisa, and hired Britain's Rolls-Royce instead.

In 2004 Siemens and Areva signed a deal worth more than €50m to modernize the Loviisa nuclear plant. In another statement, the Finnish group said it had signed an agreement with Rolls-Royce for the same project.

According to Fortum, the modernization of the safety-related systems of the plant's both units will be carried out "over several years".