Power company Vattenfall posts drop in Q2 profits

STOCKHOLM — Swedish energy group Vattenfall on Thursday posted a 36 percent drop in second-quarter earnings and said it needs to restore trust after a short circuit at a nuclear power plant in Germany raised concerns about safety there.

Vattenfall said net profit plunged to 2.5 billion kronor ($333 million) in the three-month period, down from 3.8 billion kronor in the same quarter a year ago.

Although sales rose nearly 20 percent to 42.1 billion kronor, Vattenfall said higher costs, mainly due to higher interest rates on its loans, weighed heavily on the earnings.

Vattenfall CEO Lars G. Josefsson said the company viewed “very seriously” the July 4 shutdown of its nuclear plant in Kruemmel, near Hamburg.

The incident triggered a heated debate in Germany, as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-left rivals made it clear they would make nuclear power a major issue in the September national election.

“The event does not make a positive contribution to confidence in Vattenfall,” the group’s CEO Lars G. Josefsson said in a statement.

“We aim to restore trust in the company through a large measure of openness and determination,” he said. “Apart from our focus on profitability and consolidation, this is our main priority.”

The plant had just reopened a month earlier after a two-year closure that followed a 2007 fire in another transformer. Just days later, the Swedish Radiation Authority decided to place one of the company’s plants in Sweden under special supervision, citing years of safety procedure neglect, including two incidents deemed “extremely serious.”