Germany says, it will speed up efforts to abandon nuclear energy in the wake of the Japanese crisis. German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to rethink extending the life of the country's 17 nuclear power plants. She has temporarily shut down Germany's seven oldest reactors. Several other European nations, from Finland to Switzerland, have turned more skeptical about nuclear energy after last week's earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima plant in the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.