In March, at the height of the nuclear crisis in Japan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to shut down for three months seven of Germany's oldest reactors to test their safety, adding they may not be restarted.

Three more reactors were taken offline May 1 for technical overhauls. Another reactor, the error-prone Kruemmel, has been idle since the summer of 2009.

The industry cried foul, with Eon claiming that the government-imposed closure of the utility's reactors would drain profits by around $360 million.

RWE has warned that a speedy exit from nuclear power, which ahead of the Japan crisis supplied nearly one-fourth of Germany's electricity demand, would lead to grid instability and power outages.

With those fears apparently unfounded, critics of nuclear power have been fueled to keep up the pressure on Berlin to mothball all 21 reactors.

"More than half of all German nuclear power plants are offline but our power supply remains stable," Dietmar Schuetz, head of the German renewable energy industry association BEE told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. "Until 2020 at the latest, power from the sun, wind, water and biomass can easily replace nuclear power."

When Merkel in March announced she would drop nuclear as soon as possible, it came as a surprise to many as it meant a U-turn from her previous policies.

Despite strong public opposition, Merkel last year decided to extend the running times of the German reactors until the mid-2030s, scrapping a 10-year-old decision taken by the Social Democrat/Greens government to phase out nuclear power in Germany by 2022.

The latest turnaround is poised to alter the future look of Germany's energy mix.

Experts expect the government's new energy strategy, to be unveiled next month, to bank on renewables, efficient coal- and natural gas-fired power plants and a modernization of Germany's aging power grid, which is seen unfit to transport large amounts of renewable power through the country.

Germany needs to spend at least $13 billion to build an estimated 2,240 miles of new transmission lines to integrate the fluctuating renewable electricity sources, public German energy think tank Dena said in November.

Grid expansion, however, has been slow and tedious in Germany. Public opposition to new high-voltage transmission lines and a bureaucratic planning process that takes eight years on average are slowing the blazing of a trail into a new energy age.

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