Energy and Climate Minister Paul Magnette said Monday that the government had decided to delay the nuclear phase-out that was scheduled to start in 2015.

"The government has decided to delay by 10 years the first stage of phasing out nuclear power," Magnette said in a statement.

Belgium satisfies 55 percent of its power demand with seven nuclear reactors, three of which were due to be shut down in 2015. Fearing a significant power gap, Brussels decided to keep those reactors up and running.

In return for the longer running times, the utilities affected will pay extra taxes of up to $360 million per year between 2010 and 2014, the statement said. Belgium's main nuclear company, Electrabel, has also promised to invest some $740 million in renewable energy sources, the government said.

The decision comes as the incoming German government is also expected to revive nuclear power. In 1999 Berlin decided to shut down all of Germany's 17 operating reactors by 2021.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the Free Democrats in the run-up to the Sept. 27 elections campaigned in favor of the controversial energy source, arguing that it provides secure, relatively cheap CO2-free power and should remain in the mix until renewables are ready to take over. Both parties are in coalition negotiations with a deal on the future of nuclear to be announced later this month.

Across Europe, governments are increasingly banking on nuclear power to meet the dual challenges of supply security and climate protection.

Eighty percent of France's electricity comes from nuclear plants, and Finland is currently building what will be the world's largest nuclear power plant.

This year Sweden reversed a decision to phase out the country's nuclear reactors, following a trend in Europe that only a handful of countries are still ignoring.

The Dutch government in 2005 reversed a nuclear phase-out law from 1994 and is currently probing whether to allow the construction of new plants. Italy shut down its four nuclear power plants in the late 1980s and is now planning to build several new reactors in neighboring Albania.

The British government in early 2008 urged companies willing to build reactors in the United Kingdom to come forward. French energy giant EDF has since announced it would be ready to build four nuclear plants in the United Kingdom, the first of which could go online in 2017.

Critics of nuclear power point to the dangers of accidents, nuclear proliferation and the unsolved issue of how to store the highly radioactive waste created in the process.

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