Austrian Environment Minister Nikolaus Berlakovich said he would ask European Union (EU) environment ministers, meeting in Brussels on Monday, to approve "a stress test of nuclear plants" similar to checks on the banking system after the 2008 financial crisis.

The test should include "the safety of nuclear plants in the event of an earthquake and the state of their cooling system and reactor confinement," Berlakovich told public-sector broadcaster ORF2.

"We want security to be reviewed or else (plant) closure," he said.

British Energy Minister Chris Huhne said Britain was not in a seismic zone and had different reactor types from those damaged in the tsunami that struck northeastern Japan after Friday's 8.9-magnitude quake.

But he tasked Britain's nuclear watchdog with looking closely at what happened at Fukushima.

"I?m asking our own nuclear regulator, or safety authorities, to look very carefully at the Japanese experience to learn any lessons that we can, both for our own existing nuclear reactions and for any new nuclear programme," Huhne told BBC television.

"(...) Safety is absolutely the number one priority for us in all our energy sources, and that has to be the case with this one as well."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel staged a crisis meeting with key ministers on Saturday as activists staged an anti-nuclear rally in the country's southwest.

"We know that our nuclear plants are safe... and that we are not concerned by earth tremors or tsunamis," Merkel told a press conference. "Even so, we should ask what an event of this kind can teach us."

Merkel added that she backed talks on nuclear safety among Germany's regions and at EU levels.

Activists staged the rally between the nuclear power station of Neckarwestheim and the city of Stuttgart to protest at plans to extend the operational life of 17 nuclear power stations.

The extension was approved by parliament in 2009, reversing a policy initiated by previous chancellor Gerhard Schroeder which scheduled a phaseout by 2020.

The demo had been organised before the tsunami, but the large turnout means the nuclear is likely to loom large in elections in Baden-Wuerttemberg state on March 27.

In France, NGOs hiked pressure on the government to scrap a pro-nuclear policy dating back to the oil shocks of the 1970s.

After the United States, France has the most nuclear reactors in the world.

More than three-quarters of France's electricity is derived from the atom and surplus output is exported to neighbouring countries. State-owned corporations are lobbying to sell reactors to emerging giant economies eager to meet their rising energy needs.

"We have been sounding the alarm for ages, and it is shameful that we have to reach this point for the government to ask questions -- and even then we're not sure that they are being serious," said Sofia Majnoni of Greenpeace France.

Replying to such demands, Industry Minister Eric Besson on Saturday said "all French nuclear plants have been designed with seismic risk and flooding risk factored in."

"We don't wait for an accident to happen in Japan to raise the question over here, but this doesn't mean that we can't re-evaluate the situation," he said.

Source from: AFP