GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition resolved their differences over the timing of an exit from nuclear power, setting a final date of 2022 for the country’s remaining reactors to shut down.

A tax on spent fuel rods will remain even as the shutdown proceeds, German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen told reporters following late-evening coalition talks in Berlin.

Merkel in March said she sought to accelerate the shutdown of Germany’s atomic power plants following Japan’s Fukushima disaster, the worst nuclear crisis since 1986. The decision reversed a 2010 plan to extend the operation of the facilities by an average of 12 years.

“The seven oldest reactors that have been placed under a moratorium and the Kruemmel nuclear power plant won’t go back online,” Roettgen said early on Monday after the meeting at the Chancellery. “A second group of six nuclear power plants will go offline at the end of 2021 at the latest and the three most modern power plants will go offline 2022 at the latest.”

Coalition divisions over the timing of a phase-out deepened after the anti-nuclear Green Party for the first time finished ahead of Merkel’s Christian Democrats in a state election on May 22. Merkel last week said she’d await results of an independent feasibility study on a quicker phase-out, to be published later on Monday, before spelling out a new date.

Merkel’s coalition partner the Free Democrats, backed by the BDI industry group, raised pressure on her to show flexibility in the run-up to 2022. FDP Chairman Philipp Roesler told reporters that his party seeks a phased shutdown to avert the risk of a power gap. The Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats, sought a 2021 shutdown date.

Roettgen said everybody attending the meeting agreed that “network stability and security of supply has to be guaranteed at every hour and at every level of power consumption,” adding Germany’s network agency will take the necessary measures to guarantee this.

A tax on spent fuel rods introduced this year to cover some of the costs of their disposal, as well as help the budget will stay on the statute books, Roettgen said.

Germany’s four biggest utilities, including E.ON AG and RWE AG, own the country’s reactors. The plants supplied some 22 percent of power in 2010, while renewable sources, such as wind and solar, provided 17 percent, the Economy Ministry said.