Very interesting - just skimmed the article but obviously I underestimated how big an element the environmentalists are in making policy change in Germany. Their abandonment of nuclear power has to be the bonehead move of the century, but at least this helps to explain why this could be happening.
The anti-nuclear push in Germany can be traced back to green Nazis who were upset that the allies came away with the atom bomb at the end of world war II. One of the primary pushers on this movment was Guenther Schwab, a former Austrian Nazi forester. Check out this article from last February on the American Thinker - http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/the_nazi_origins_of_apocalypti.html.