LONDON -- Governments across Europe have ordered reviews of the safety of their nuclear power generators in light of the devastation at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi complex in Japan, and major uncertainty now hangs over the future of at least some new nuclear plans.

But with the exception of Germany, where a nuclear phaseout law was first reversed and has now been put on hold and where the politics of the issue are deeply divisive, the nuclear power industry is confident that, after a period of reflection, nuclear power plants will remain in the future energy mix.

"All the needs that are out there in terms of the need for reliable baseload electricity with low carbon, with good security of supply ... haven't changed as a result of Fukushima," World Nuclear Association spokesman Jonathan Cobb told ClimateWire.

Green Party demonstrators march in Germany carrying a sign that says, "Fukushima warns that nuclear power must be shut down." Photo courtesy of Flickr.

"In one or two countries, the reviews may delay things somewhat. But really, with the exception of Germany, where things are perhaps a little more unclear in terms of the way it is going to go, we don't expect it to have too much impact on the plans that were ongoing at the time." He spoke in an interview in London following a nuclear industry conference in Chicago where the Japanese crisis dominated the agenda.

Last week, following a series of strong aftershocks, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) ordered workers at Fukushima Daiichi to move emergency diesel generators and a switch panel that controls cooling pumps to higher ground -- over 60 feet above sea level -- to limit damage from the possibility of another tsunami. More backup generators and fire engines have also been brought to the plant.

While the accident has faded from the world's headlines, engineers at the complex continue to probe the full extent of the damage. Water samples taken by a concrete pump from the spent fuel pond above reactor No. 4 indicated, according to the company, that many of the spent fuel assemblies there appear to be intact despite evidence that some may have melted from lack of cooling water during the hours after the March 11 tsunami caused partial fuel meltdowns at three operating reactors at the complex.

While the WNA might be quietly confident, the nuclear industry knows it is still grappling with a major public relations disaster. The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said earlier this month that there could be no return to business as usual as Fukushima remains, as it is likely to do for some time, a major problem.

"It is clear that more needs to be done to strengthen the safety of nuclear power plants so that the risk of a future accident is significantly reduced," he told a meeting in Vienna.

Dampened dreams of renaissance

One by one, as the Japanese crisis unfolded, governments across Europe -- many of which have active policies to build new nuclear plants in the face of the climate change challenge -- announced reviews of existing and future plant safety.

And while government ministers hastened to stress that they already had robust nuclear safety rules and in any case were either not in zones of major earthquake activity or facing the threat of devastating tsunamis, the announcements have undoubtedly at least drizzled on the renaissance that the nuclear power industry has been talking about for the past six years.

The United Kingdom, whose present Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition and previous Labour governments both endorsed new nuclear power plants to replace the existing aging nuclear fleet and to help meet national and international carbon emissions reduction goals, announced a review of safety rules, as did France, which gets some 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear.

France, which remains firmly pro-nuclear, has also called for nuclear authorities from the Group of 20 industrialized nations to meet on May 20 to define an "international norm" for nuclear safety.

Italy, which after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster had decided to end nuclear power generation, had been planning to hold a referendum later this year on its return. Fukushima has put that plan on ice as the country has slapped a moratorium on any new build for a year.

Germany, with 40 gigawatts of wind and solar power capacity, was to have phased out its nuclear fleet under a law passed by the previous government.

But earlier this year, in a political sleight of hand questioned by many, that law was abandoned and replaced by life extensions to all but the oldest nuclear plants.

Electoral headache for Berlin

But Fukushima changed all that. Chancellor Angela Merkel suddenly announced the closure for at least three months of the oldest seven plants. There would also appear to be some sort of moratorium on the life extension agreement. Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen -- a senior member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party -- has even called for the phaseout law to be reinstated.

The whole nuclear issue has become an electoral headache for Merkel, with anti-nuclear street protests and the Greens capturing a record vote share in a key local election late last month.

Not to be left out, E.U. leaders have called for common "stress tests" to be drawn up that all national nuclear authorities in the bloc of 27 nations -- 14 of which currently use nuclear power -- would have to pass.

Details of just what these tests would entail remain very vague and in any case are not expected to be spelled out before the end of the year.

But they are already divisive, with some E.U. lawmakers saying that whatever they would entail would step on the sacrosanct toes of the national nuclear bodies, and others saying that limiting them to the bloc's borders is missing the point, as radiation, like carbon emissions, does not recognize national boundaries.

WNA's Cobb says the industry is ready for safety reviews. "Ministers have expressed a range of opinions, but in terms of the setting of policy, I don't think things have changed," he said. "There is a desire by the industry to be involved in the reviews that are happening."

"If we are at a position now where the new build that had been put forward was just starting to get going ... then now is virtually the right time to be making absolutely sure that safety of any new plant being built is assured, rather than that decision happening during build or a few years into its operation," he added.