Hamburg  - Swedish-based electricity group Vattenfall sacked the head of one of Germany's nuclear power stations on Tuesday, three days after a short circuit crippled the reactor he was in charge of.

Although the fault did not involve the reactor itself, it has brought the controversial issue of nuclear power back into play just three months before the country's general election.

The incident occured at the Kruemmel reactor east of Hamburg, one of Germany's 17 reactors.

Vattenfall blamed the plant manager, whom it did not name, for failing to install discharge detectors on a transformer as promised to the German authorities.

It added that the two electrical transformers supplying power to on-site machinery would not be repaired, but completely replaced after one of the units failed Saturday.

That means Kruemmel will not resume generating power for the German grid for several months. An earlier transformer fire shut down the entire plant for two years. Kruemmel was commissioned in 1983.

The regulator of the plant, Schleswig-Holstein Social Policy Minister Gitta Trauernicht, welcomed the move, saying she had been telling Stockholm-based Vattenfall for months to "replace rather than repair."

Polls show a majority of Germans hostile to nuclear power, convinced it is unsafe. Vattenfall's errors in running plant machinery have tended to confirm those fears.

There are 17 nuclear reactors at 12 sites in Germany, producing around a quarter of the nation's electricity. The Social Democrat-Greens government decided in 2000 to decommission the reactors by 2020.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suggested she might extend the lives of the reactors if she wins the September 27 general election and is able to rule without the Social Democrats.(dpa)