DUSSELDORF, Germany, Aug. 13 (UPI) -- German utility company E.ON reported a surge in profits for the first half of 2012 in part because of the lack of charges from a nuclear power draw down.
E.ON said Monday that it posted a net profit of $3.9 billion for the first half of 2012, triple compared with the same period last year.
"The absence of an adverse one-off effect, recorded in the second quarter of 2011, relating to Germany's accelerated phaseout of nuclear energy had a positive impact on E.ON's first-half earnings in the amount of $1.8 billion," the company said in its earnings report.
Nuclear power dropped from 22.4 percent of the German energy mix in 2010 to 17.7 percent in 2011. German Chancellor Angela Merkel last year ordered the country's nuclear power plants closed in response to the meltdown of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in early 2011.
The company added that an increase in installed electricity generating capacity in Russia, meanwhile, lead to a 39 percent increase in earnings there to $500,000.
E.ON and Russian natural gas company Gazprom are part of the consortium overseeing the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline to Germany.