"The remaining reactors should be allowed to serve for as long as they last," she said.

After Olofsson's change of heart all four alliance parties now see eye-to-eye on nuclear power. According to recent opinion polls the alliance has pulled marginally ahead of the SDP and its left and green support parties.

As recently as October 2004 the Centre Party agreed with the long-ruling centre-left Social Democrats (SDP) in backing the closure of the 600 megawatt Barseback-2 nuclear reactor by May 2005. Barseback-1 was shut in 1999.

In Sweden's multi-party democracy, dominated for decades by the SDP, such deals on specific issues are occasionally struck across the left-right political divide.

A government-appointed expert proposed in October that the next of the then remaining 10 reactors ought to be decommissioned by 2015. Prime Minister Goran Persson has said nuclear energy, which he sees as old fashioned, should be replaced by natural gas and wind power.

Olofsson's party is a member of a four-party centre-right alliance intent on breaking the SDP's stranglehold on government power. DI quoted a political analyst as saying the Centre's nuclear power u-turn was likely to boost the alliance's chances in the next general election in September 2006.

Energy-intensive Swedish companies in the forestry and metal industries -- and many traditionally SDP-friendly trade unions in these sectors -- oppose the government's plans to phase out nuclear power.