Back from the Dead Europe's scramble for nuclear energy is making for radioactive politics. BY AARON WIENER

At the dawn of the 21st century, nuclear power appeared to be drawing its last breath across much of Europe. Italy had shut down its last reactor in 1990. The Netherlands had closed one of its two reactors in 1997, and the other was set to cease operating in 2003. The Austrian parliament had voted in 1997 to keep the country nuclear-free; the Belgian government followed six years later with a move to rid itself of nuclear power by 2025. Sweden planned to complete its nuclear phaseout by 2010. And the center-left government in Germany, Europe's largest economy, introduced the Nuclear Exit Law in 2000, which mandated the end of nuclear power in 20 years.
Each country, it seemed, was taking its turn driving the nail deeper into nuclear energy's coffin. But the nail didn't hold.

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Ten years later, nuclear power is staging a comeback in Europe, capped by German Chancellor Angela Merkel's announcement this month that her center-right administration was overturning the nuclear phaseout and permitting reactors to remain operational into the 2030s. Under the new policy, which resulted from lengthy negotiations with utility companies, nuclear plants will be allowed to remain in operation for an average of 12 years beyond their current shutdown dates -- eight years for plants constructed before 1980 and up to 14 years for those built afterward. In exchange, the operators of Germany's 17 nuclear plants will pay a combined 2.3 billion euros in annual fuel-rod taxes and contribute to a renewable-energy fund. Merkel and the plan's supporters argue that the nuclear extension will allow the country to retain a clean and affordable energy supply until the renewable-energy industry is more fully developed.
Europe, of course, is not the only place where a nuclear expansion is taking place -- China, India, and other Asian countries are rapidly expanding their nuclear capacities, and any major energy policy to emerge in the United States will almost certainly contain generous loan guarantees for nuclear construction. But in Europe -- where Chernobyl still looms in the background, where green activism is at its strongest, and where nuclear power until recently seemed to be on its way out -- the reversal is by far the sharpest. And there's anger in the streets.
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/22/back_from_the_dead