All nuclear power plants in Germany will halt operations by 2022.

This was announced by Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen after a meeting with Germany's ruling coalition early Monday.

Rottgen said six nuclear reactors will be shut down by 2021 at the latest, and the three newest reactors by 2022.

Eight of its oldest power plants, were already subjected to a moratorium last March, and the Kruemmel nuclear power plant, would not resume operations after it was shut down in July 2009 due to a short-circuit in its transformer.

Germany relied on nuclear power for 23% of its energy before the March moratorium on its oldest power plants.

Chancellor Angela Merkel had set up an ethics panel to look into nuclear power following the disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan.

After the ethics panel had delivered its conclusions, Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats had met with its junior partners on Sunday.

At the time of the chancellorship of Gerhard Schroder, Merkel's predecessor, the social democratic-green government had already announced the plan to halt all nuclear power plants operations by 2022. The phase-out plan was delayed in late 2010 when during the chancellorship of Merkel the conservative-liberal government decreed a 12-year delay.

After the disaster hit Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011 and some 250,000 Germans held the largest rally to protest the continued use of nuclear energy, Merkel declared a 3-month moratorium on the reactor lifespan extension passed in 2010.