The United States, China, India, Russia, France, Canada, Britain, Finland, Sweden -- the list of countries aiming to build new nuclear power plants or at least extending the running times of older ones is long.

Germany, Europe's largest economy, in 2000 decided to shut down all its nuclear power plants by 2021 -- and some of them even earlier. The one in Biblis in western Germany, built in 1974 and thus Germany's oldest plant, will be taken off the grid as soon as 2010.

The decision to phase out nuclear energy was made at a time when the price for a barrel of oil was roughly $20. It is at nearly $140 today. Coal, which is cheaper but also growing in price, is far from a perfect alternative because of the high carbon dioxide emissions it emits.

Germany has ambitious climate-protection goals, and many experts say the power Germany generates with nuclear energy (some 26 percent) can't be readily replaced by renewables.

That's why the phase-out is now being torpedoed from all sides. Chancellor Angela Merkel is the most prominent supporter of keeping nuclear in the mix -- she wants at least to extend the running times of the safest plants.

Her center-right Christian Democrats and several opposition lawmakers support her, while her coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, backed by the opposition Green Party, vehemently oppose those plans. They point to the threat of an accident and its possibly disastrous consequences; to the danger of the proliferation of nuclear weapons; and to the still unsolved issue of how best to deal with nuclear waste.

Merkel nevertheless was pressured by international leaders at the recent Group of Eight summit in Japan to change Germany's nuclear strategy; at the summit Germany was the only nation not to join in the favorable statements toward nuclear energy. Although she would like to do so, she is unable to openly talk about scrapping the German phase-out plan. Before joining forces with the Social Democrats to form Germany's grand coalition government, she signed an agreement that included scrapping nuclear.

Leading industry officials have said Germany needs nuclear energy to guarantee sustainable power generation.

"Nuclear power is the cheapest form of climate protection," Wulf Bernotat, the chief executive officer of German energy giant E.ON, recently told the foreign press corps in Berlin.

Bernotat said that electricity generated by nuclear power is cost-efficient and clean.

"In Germany alone, it avoids roughly 150 million tons of CO2 per year; that's as much as the entire transportation sector emits."

"We should therefore seriously consider extending the running times" of Germany's nuclear power plants, he added.

Critics of nuclear power in Germany say, however, electricity won't become cheaper once running times are extended. They argue that the likes of E.ON are unhappy that some of their biggest cash cows are being shut down.

Merkel's conservatives already have drafted compromise plans to please the other parties. If nuclear power plants are to remain online longer, then energy companies will have to funnel part of the additional profit into so-called sustainability funds that would help pay for energy-efficiency measures and the infrastructure for renewable energy generation.

Yet so far, the Social Democrats are not willing to give up on the phase-out. While some of them are willing to move, there remains a faction inside the government party that sees the phase-out of nuclear energy as an affair of the heart.

Next year Germans will go to the polls and vote for a new government. If Merkel's conservatives could form their favorite government together with the free-market Free Democrats, then nuclear energy would certainly see a revival in Germany as well.

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