Utility RWE AG (RWE.XE) said Wednesday it has filed a lawsuit against the German government over its nuclear fuel tax, starting what is expected to be a series of claims against the government's levy and recent atomic energy policy shift.

A spokesman for RWE's power generation unit--RWE Power--said the company has filed the case at the tax court in Munich .

RWE and Germany's other three nuclear power plant operators have repeatedly said they consider the tax out of tune with European Union regulations, and have threatened to take the government to court.

The company has said that it expects the tax to cost it between EUR300 million and EUR400 million in 2011.

Competitor E.ON AG (EOAN.XE) has said it will sue over the tax.

The RWE Power spokesman said the company's legal complaint is related to the recent change of fuel rods at its reactor Gundremmingen B. The levy is payable upon fuel rod exchanges as it taxes the consumption of nuclear fuel in the power generation process.

The nuclear fuel tax was introduced at the beginning of 2011. Officially the government has labeled the levy--which was initially expected to generate proceeds for the state of EUR2.3 billion per year--as part of an austerity package.

But market observers have linked the nuclear tax directly to the extension of reactor operating lives, which was announced by the government at the same time.

Utilities' criticism of the tax increased when the government made a U-turn on its previous nuclear energy policy--reversing the reactor lifetime extensions and accelerating the planned atomic energy exit--after the accidents in Japan 's Fukushima Daiichi power plant in March.

But the fuel rod tax remains in place, to utilities' annoyance.

The utilities have also that they would seek compensation worth billions of euros for the sooner-than-expected nuclear energy exit.

Legal experts said the nuclear exit law, as drafted by the government, violates the constitution, because it injures the proprietary rights of reactor operators.

Part of the argument centers on the government's decision to fix the shut-down dates for the individual reactors. The dates are set too soon for the utilities to exhaust all the power production quotas their reactors have previously been granted, the utilities have said.

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