(Reuters) - Germany will shut down all seven of its nuclear power plants that began operating before 1980 at least till June, the government said on Tuesday, leaving open whether they will ever start up again after Japan's crisis.
Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the closures, which will leave only 10 nuclear stations still generating, under a nuclear policy moratorium imposed as Japan faced a potential catastrophe at its earthquake-crippled Fukushima complex.
"Power plants that went into operation before the end of 1980 will ... be shut down for the period of the moratorium," Merkel told a news conference, adding that the decision would be carried out by government decree as no agreement with the plants' operators had been reached.
Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said it was not clear if the reactors to be shut down in the three-month moratorium would remain closed or be reconnected to the grid afterwards.
Merkel astonished German politicians on Monday by suspending an unpopular coalition decision taken only last autumn, under which the life of Germany's 17 nuclear power plants would be extended by years.
She drew accusations on Tuesday of transparent trickery for the move, with the opposition and media saying she was trying to avoid a regional election disaster later this month.
PANIC AND PARTY POLITICS
The seven aging plants account for about a third of Germany's nuclear capacity. However, one of them has been offline since an accident in 2007, and another shut down last month for maintenance.
Business leaders urged caution when making major decisions on nuclear plants, which in total supply about a quarter of all electricity needed to power Europe's biggest economy. "Panic and party politics make bad advisers," said Hans Heinrich Driftmann, who heads the German Chamber of Industry and Trade.
The government said reliable power supplies were assured, but German electricity prices hit their highest level since October 2009 after Merkel's announcement. [nLDE72E1AA]
Merkel said consequences of the Japanese crisis had to be dealt with at an international level.
"Yesterday I agreed with the French President Nicolas Sarkozy that Germany and France ... would put forward an initiative to put safety of nuclear plants onto the international agenda within the framework of the G20," she said.
Last year the government had decided to keep the nuclear plants -- operated by E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall -- running for about 12 years beyond their original shutdown date, despite protests even before the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on Friday.
Shares of E.ON and RWE were down 5 percent and 5.2 percent, after falls of 5.3 and 4.
Germany has temporarily shut down seven of its nuclear reactors while it reconsiders its nuclear strategy.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said that all reactors operational before 1980 would be taken offline, and safety checks carried out on the remaining plants.
The move comes after concerns about radiation leaks at a Japanese plant after last Friday's earthquake.
The EU has also reached agreement on "stress tests" of all European nuclear facilities.
"We want to look at the risk and safety issues in the light of events in Japan," the European energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger said.
'Out of service'
Chancellor Merkel also pointed to the safety concerns behind the German move.
"In light of the situation, we will carry out a safety check of all nuclear plants," she said.
"Those nuclear power plants which began operation before 1980 will be provisionally shut down for the duration of the moratorium. They will be out of service.
"Safety is the priority. Those are the criteria by which we acted today."
All safety questions would be answered by 15 June, she said.
Last year, Germany decided to extend the life of its 17 nuclear power plants by 12 years, but that decision was suspended for three months on Monday.
The government had faced growing pressure for the extension to be scrapped.
More than a quarter of all German electricity comes from nuclear power.
The Swiss government has also suspended decisions on its nuclear programme.
Concerns are growing about radiation leaks at a nuclear plant in Japan that has been hit by a third explosion in four days following last week's earthquake and resulting tsunami.
The blast occurred at reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant - 250km (155 miles) north-east of Tokyo - which engineers had been trying to stabilise after two other reactors exploded.