RWE to foot nuclear waste bill by mid-2017 - Die Welt

BERLIN, Jan 2 (Reuters) - RWE (IOB: 0FUZ.IL - news) will be able to pay the 6.8 billion euros ($7.15 billion) requested by the government to fund the storage of nuclear waste in one lump sum by the middle of 2017, newspaper Die Welt reported, citing the firm's chief executive.

German utilities RWE, E.ON, EnBW and Vattenfall agreed with the government in October to start contributing this year to a 23.6 billion euro fund in exchange for shifting liability for nuclear waste storage to the state, giving investors greater clarity over their future finances.

The companies had been pushing to get favourable terms of payment and the October deal allows them to transfer the funds at one stroke or in several more costly instalments over the next decade.

"We don't need to draw on the possibility of payment by instalments," RWE CEO Rolf Martin Schmitz said in an interview with the daily newspaper published on Monday, adding that RWE (Amsterdam: RW6.AS - news) was "well positioned" after raising billions in a stock listing of a minority holding in energy group Innogy.

But the firm will step up cost-cutting efforts and cut 2,300 jobs in Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain between 2015 and 2020 to cushion the impact of low wholesale electricity prices, Schmitz said. ($1 = 0.9510 euros) (Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)