The world's worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 turned a large part of German public opinion against atomic power, and in 2000 the government of chancellor Gerhard Schroeder decided to mothball all reactors by around 2020.

Shipments of radioactive waste to a processing plant in Gorleben in western Germany have attracted mass protests in recent years, while Germany's lack of a permanent storage site has added to nuclear's unpopularity.

Currently, Germany's 17 reactors supply around a third of its electricity, with coal and gas producing more than half and renewables such as solar and wind power some 12 percent.

Germany is uneasy about volatile gas and oil imports from Russia and the Middle East, and wants to be at the forefront of global efforts to reduce carbon emissions ahead of a crunch UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

As a result, Berlin has set some ambitious targets.

By 2020, the country aims to cut its carbon emissions by 40 percent compared with 1990 levels, and have renewables produce a third of Germany's power needs in the same timeframe.

But Merkel's CDU/CSU conservatives and their new coalition partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), believe the life of some of the nuclear plants should be extended, forming what she calls a "bridge" until renewables can fill the gap.

Fresh from her election victory, Merkel on Monday vowed to press ahead with what her party had promised on nuclear power, telling reporters: "I don't intend today to go back on what was in our election campaign."

Zoe Grainge at consultancy IHS Insight said that the closure could be postponed to around 2037.

"While nuclear plants are expensive to build, they are cheap to run, providing large, steady supplies of power for decades without emitting any greenhouse gases," Grainge said.

It is clear, however, that Merkel will have a struggle on her hands, with a parliamentary head of the Greens, Renate Kuenast, vowing that the party would oppose a nuclear U-turn both in parliament and with demonstrations.

Kuenast, whose party was in coalition with Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) when the nuclear exit was approved by parliament, told the Leipziger Volkszeitung on Monday that opposing any change was her "top priority".

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the SPD's chancellor candidate who wants to become the party's new parliamentary head, said on Sunday night that he also would fight any reversal tooth and nail.

On Saturday Steinmeier, foreign minister in the outgoing government and Schroeder's former chief of staff, predicted a return of the sometimes violent anti-nuclear demonstrations of the past.

"If Germany gives up its leading international role when it comes to abandoning nuclear energy ... the government will get the bill politically," Lutz Mez, energy specialist at Berlin's Free University, told AFP.

Mathias Edler, a spokesman for ecologist pressure group Greenpeace, said a "clear majority" of voters, and even most CDU voters, oppose extending Germany's dependence on nuclear power.

"If they do it, they will open a whole can of worms in German society again, it is clear," Edler told AFP. "People will go out on the streets, there is no other option."

Fellow pressure groups Ausgestrahlt and BUND agreed: "If the new government intends to bow to the demands of the nuclear lobby, then they should expect stiff resistance."

"The future of atomic power will be the defining conflict of the next parliament," Ausgestrahlt's Jochen Stay told AFP.

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