Germany's environment minister urged lawmakers Friday to back a "historic breakthrough" and relaunch the search for a nuclear waste dump site, a topic that has sparked controversy for three decades.

Peter Altmaier told a parliamentary debate that the new search would look at a "blank map" as it scours Germany for "the most suitable final repository regarding the safety of people and nature".

Under Chancellor Angela Merkel's 2011 energy transition plan, Germany plans to shutter its last atomic power plant by 2022 while building up clean and safe renewables such as solar and wind power.

But even after its "nuclear exit", Europe's biggest economy will have to find a place to entomb in perpetuity tens of thousands of tonnes of waste that will stay highly radioactive for many millenia.

The question of where to put it has split Germany since the 1980s in a battle that has centred on an existing underground site at Gorleben in the northern state of Lower Saxony, long a hotspot for protests.

Under the new agreement, forged in principle by federal and state governments in April, Germany would relaunch its search for a site with the aim of finding a location by 2031 and building the facility by 2040.

Gorleben, an underground geological salt dome formation, remains on the list of potential sites to be assessed by a 24-member committee made up from industry, government, academia and civil society.

It would initially be tasked with establishing by late 2015 the search criteria for the nuclear graveyard, including whether the site should be in a subterranean salt, clay or granite formation.

The new law is meant to be passed by early July but sticking points remain, including a demand by Lower Saxony that, while the search is on, no new radioactive waste will find its way to Gorleben.

Greenpeace activists on Friday dumped their decommissioned ship the Beluga, which was used in many anti-nuclear protests, as a memorial at the Gorleben site.

Other outstanding questions are where to store another 26 new containers of nuclear waste and the nuclear industry's objections to a demand that it finance the multi-billion-euro search for a new site.