Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Vattenfall AB, the Nordic region’s biggest utility, said two German nuclear plants scheduled to be restarted next year may become a political issue after last month’s general election.

“It’s also part of a political process in Germany” after the re-election of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chief Executive Officer Lars Josefsson said today. “Germany has a new government, and they are reformulating energy policies,” he said on a conference call with analysts following the company’s third-quarter results.

Merkel’s coalition plans to extend the operating time of German nuclear plants, with the government claiming most of the windfall profits. That would overturn a law passed under former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that shuts them down by about 2021. Details are to be negotiated with energy companies.

Stockholm-based Vattenfall plans to install two new transformers at the halted Kruemmel reactor in northwest Germany in “early” 2010, it said today in its earnings report. The company has earlier said a restart was scheduled for the second quarter. Josefsson said on July 30 that Brunsbuettel would start early next year.

Vattenfall is “working diligently” to get the facilities in restart mode, Josefsson said. Resumption must be approved by local regulators. E.ON AG, Germany’s biggest utility, owns half of the 1,260 megawatt Kruemmel and one third of the 771-megawatt Brunsbuettel facility.

The 25-year-old Kruemmel reactor stopped on July 4 for the second time in a week following a short circuit in one of the transformers. In June, the plant returned from a two-year outage caused by a fault in the other transformer, which led to a fire.

Brunsbuettel has been shut for more than two years following a short circuit in the power grid nearby.

Nuclear-power stations run by Dusseldorf-based E.ON, RWE AG of Essen, Vattenfall, and Karlsruhe-based EnBW Energie Baden- Wuerttemberg AG generated 23 percent of Germany’s electricity last year.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lars Paulsson in London at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 27, 2009 10:31 EDT