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Retreat from nuclear energy can no longer be halted, Germany's new Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen told daily Bild on Wednesday. "One can use atomic energy in the long run only when the majority of the people accept it," he said. "This hasn't been the case for years and in my estimation it's not going to change." The statement from Röttgen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, would appear to draw a line under the new centre-right government's decision to abandon a total phaseout of nuclear power by 2020. Merkel has said that the life of some reactors should be extended to use nuclear energy as a "transition energy" until renewables like solar and wind can produce more power.

Retreat from nuclear energy can no longer be halted, Germany's new Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen told daily Bild on Wednesday. "One can use atomic energy in the long run only when the majority of the people accept it," he said. "This hasn't been the case for years and in my estimation it's not going to change." The statement from Röttgen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, would appear to draw a line under the new centre-right government's decision to abandon a total phaseout of nuclear power by 2020. Merkel has said that the life of some reactors should be extended to use nuclear energy as a "transition energy" until renewables like solar and wind can produce more power.

A shipment of radioactive waste from German nuclear plants arrived at a storage site on Tuesday morning after being delayed by fierce protests from nuclear activists. The demonstrations are partly in response to conservative calls for a rethink of the planned phaseout of nuclear power stations. German riot police confronted activists along the route of the nuclear waste transport. Eleven trucks carrying radioactive waste from German nuclear power stations arrived a day late at their destination, a storage site near Gorleben in northern Germany, early on Tuesday morning after thousands of anti-nuclear activists tried to stop the convoy.

Germany's environment minister made himself out to be a crisis manager in the scandal surrounding the Asse nuclear waste storage facility. But the problem has not been solved -- and the issue threatens to derail the CDU's plans to postpone Germany's nuclear phaseout.

Debates about climate change at the G-8 meetings in Japan and this week's mishap at a French nuclear facility have Germans revisiting the benefits and dangers of nuclear energy. Deep national divisions on the issue are reflected on the editorial pages. The Tricastin nuclear plant in southern France, where a liquid containing traces of unenriched uranium leaked Monday. Zoom AP The Tricastin nuclear plant in southern France, where a liquid containing traces of unenriched uranium leaked Monday. Germans are conflicted about nuclear energy, and amazingly so. In fact, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Forsa polling agency, exactly 46 percent of Germans are for -- and 46 percent of Germans are against -- extending the operating life of the country's nuclear reactors past the date 15 years from now when a nuclear phaseout is supposed to be completed.

A 20-year-old telegram has heated up Germany's debate over nuclear power in the run-up to parliamentary elections later this month. The telegram seems to substantiate charges that politicians in the government of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl pressured scientists to recommend an old salt mine as a potential site for long-term nuclear waste storage. The debate is part of a larger controversy over whether or not the country should phase out its nuclear power by 2022, as current law stipulates. The country's two center-right parties, which have a slight lead in the latest polls, have said they want to let the country's nuclear power plants run up to a decade longer. The country's three, main, left-leaning parties support the phaseout. As many as 50,000 people attended a march against nuclear power in Berlin last weekend. The long-running controversy over the site will seem familiar to observers of the debate over the proposed nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, which has been defunded by the Obama Administration. Germany, like the United States, has no long-term disposal site for high-level radioactive waste.

Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a contentious call Sunday to slow Germany's planned phase-out of nuclear energy, amid growing fears it will be impossible to slash greenhouse gas emissions without it.

Germany's planned phase-out of nuclear power generation will raise the country's natural gas demand between 12.6% and 23% by about 2023, according to a statement on energy security policy submitted to the EU summit in Prague on Friday by the co-ruling Christian Democrats. The statement, which the party said is based on government projections, also will be submitted to the EU Energy Summit scheduled for this weekend in Sofia, Bulgaria.