French group Veolia Environnement is hoping to move into the market for decommissioning nuclear power plants in Germany, one of its top executives said in a magazine interview on Monday.

"We're in talks with possible partners," the head of Veolia Environnement's German operations Etienne Petit told the weekly WirtschaftsWoche.

"There's very big potential in Germany. It's a market which promises opportunities for decades," Petit said.

But Veolia Environnement would not be involved in treating uranium or dismantling the reactor core. Its strengths lay in water treatment and decontamination, he explained.

"There are huge sums of money involved in this market," Petit said.

Following the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, Japan in 2011, the German government decided to phase out nuclear power by 2022.

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VEOLIA ENVIRONNEMENT