"The events in Japan ... teach us that events deemed absolutely unlikely can happen," Merkel said Monday in Berlin. "We have a new situation and this has to be analyzed very thoroughly."

Merkel said she had decided to have all German reactors checked for safety and then the government would decide on their future. The risk analyses will include events such as earthquakes and terrorist attacks, Merkel indicated. She suggested that older, less safe reactors could be shut down earlier than planned.

"There will be no taboos," she said. "Safety stands above everything."

Merkel added, however, that Germany won't shut down all reactors and revert to buying electricity generated by reactors abroad. Instead, Berlin would push for a more speedy transition to an energy mix dominated by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and biomass, she said.

The decision comes after Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle had called for a "new risk analysis," following the crisis in Japan, where a double blow of an earthquake and a tsunami may has killed thousands of people and damaged a series of nuclear reactors in the country's northeast.

There have been at least two explosions at different reactors in Japan. There have been reports that cooling systems have broken down, with widespread fears of a nuclear meltdown and a release of radiation.

Westerwelle Monday in the same news conference said officials will specifically check on the safety of the cooling systems installed at all German reactors. The German opposition has demanded that the country's seven oldest reactors be taken off the grid immediately.

Several politicians in Western nations, including in Britain and the United States, have called for similar reassessments of their governments' support for nuclear power following the events in Japan.

France, which supplies nearly 80 percent of its power needs with 58 nuclear reactors, however, defended the energy source.

"We can't switch to renewables overnight," French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told Europe 1 radio.

Proponents of nuclear power have pointed to the fact that large-scale earthquakes are unlikely to hit Western and Central Europe. The industry is nevertheless concerned, well aware that the political fallout from the Japanese quake could kill new business.

German utilities Eon and RWE, which operate reactors in Germany and Asia, have seen shares prices tumble. Shares of EDF and Areva from France, two of the world's largest companies operating in the nuclear sector, also fell.

Areva and EDF aim to export technology to Britain and emerging powers India and China, which plan to build several new reactors over the coming decades to become less dependent on coal.

Westerwelle, however, said Monday that Germany would talk to allies in Europe on nuclear power.

"No one can deny that things have changed," following the disasters in Japan, Westerwelle said.

The European Commission estimates that nuclear power plants produce roughly one-third of the bloc's electricity consumption.

The German government last year decided to extend the running times of the country's 17 nuclear reactors by an average of 12 years. The move, unpopular with ordinary Germans even before the Japanese quake, is now coming under additional scrutiny.

earlier related report
Germany puts nuclear extension on ice
Berlin (AFP) March 14, 2011 - Fears of a nuclear disaster in Japan prompted Germany on Monday to put on ice extending the lifespan of its nuclear power plants, pending a safety review.

"We cannot just go back to business as usual," Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin. "Events in Japan... teach us that risks that were thought to be completely impossible cannot in fact be completely ruled out."

She announced a three-month moratorium on government plans approved last year to postpone by more than a decade until the mid-2030s when the last of the 17 nuclear reactors in Europe's biggest economy are turned off.

Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said that during the moratorium the plug would be pulled from reactors -- the oldest has been running for 35 years -- which would have been switched off if there hadn't been an extension.

"Personally I expect that (the reactors) taken out of the network during the moratorium will not go back on line," Roettgen said.

Explosions have rocked two overheating nuclear reactors at Japan's ageing Fukushima plant, 250 kilometres (160 miles) northeast of Tokyo, after the cooling systems were knocked out by Friday's 8.9-magnitude quake.

"If a highly developed country like Japan, with high safety standards and norms, cannot prevent the consequences for nuclear power of an earthquake and a tsunami, then this has consequences for the whole world," Merkel said.

"This changes the situation, including in Germany. We have a new situation, and this situation must be thoroughly analysed.... Reviewing security, there can be no taboos."

Under Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, Germany decided a decade ago to go nuclear-free by 2020, but after being re-elected to a second term in late 2009 Merkel postponed the switch-off last year.

Merkel says that the extension is necessary because green technologies like solar and wind power are not yet ready to fill the gap left by abandoning atomic energy.

But nuclear power is highly unpopular in environmentally conscious Germany, with shipments of radioactive waste regularly attracting angry protests, and the extension is opposed by a majority of voters, surveys have shown.

Campaigners, many of whom say the extension is more about generating extra profits for energy firms than the environment, have announced vigils around Germany for Monday, including outside Merkel's chancellery.

Shares in German power firm EON slumped 5.26 percent on Monday, while rival RWE lost 4.77 percent.

In the latest mass demo, tens of thousands formed a 45-kilometre (28-mile) human chain between a nuclear plant and Stuttgart on Saturday. The demo was planned beforehand, but events in Japan swelled numbers.

It took place in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where on March 27 Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) face losing power after 58 years in charge, in the most important of seven state elections this year.

The Social Democrats (SPD) in Baden-Wuerttemberg have vowed to switch off the state's two oldest nuclear power stations by 2020 if they win the election. Polls suggest a tight race.

On Monday the opposition piled the pressure on Merkel, with SPD head Sigmar Gabriel saying that being in a zone with a low risk of earthquakes did not make Germany's nuclear power plants totally safe.

"People are making the mistake a bit in the current debate of seeing the earthquake (in Japan) as the problem. The problem is the power cut," he said.

Merkel was due on Tuesday to meet premiers from the German states where there are nuclear plants to discuss plant safety.

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