1ST LEAD German energy firms entitled to damages for nuclear shutdown policy By Andrew McCathie, dpa

Karlsruhe, Germany (dpa) - German energy companies are entitled to "appropriate" compensation for the government‘s 2011 decision to rush ahead with the shutdown of nuclear power plants, the country‘s top court ruled Tuesday.German Chancellor Angela Merkel abandoned her previous commitment to nuclear energy to push through plans to phase out the country‘s 17 nuclear power plants by 2022 and to make a switch to greener energy in the wake of the 2011 meltdown at Japan‘s Fukushima nuclear power plant.Since then, Germany‘s energy giants Eon, RWE and Vattenfall have argued that the lack of warning on the policy shift left them unable to restructure their operations and forced them to take on massive losses.Tuesday‘s ruling by the Karlsruhe-based Constitutional Court does not set out how much compensation the energy companies are entitled to.According to some estimates, the losses suffered by the companies amount to 19 billion euros (20.5 billion dollars).However, the court called on Berlin to improve the law setting out its so-called Energiewende (energy transition) by June 2018.Still, it remains unclear whether the companies will be able to implement their claims against Merkel‘s conservative-led government.Negotiations are already under way in Berlin over the distribution of the enormous costs for the disposal of nuclear contaminated sites.However, for the government to relieve the power plant operators of the liability risks for undertaking the final disposal, the energy companies will first have to drop all their claims.