Germany can't wave a magic wand and switch off Russian imports overnight. But they did just commit a few hundred billion to accelerate their plans to get rid of coal and gas based generation. That's a direct consequence of the Ukrainian situation. Like the US, Germany was overly depending on cheap gas until recently. Now that it has to import the gas in liquid form from the US (and a few other places), it's going to be a lot more expensive. Hence hundreds of billions to cut their dependence on the stuff entirely.
Regarding nuclear in Germany, I think you are a bit short on the facts. Nuclear in Germany was always pretty minor. What little they had is now nearly gone. During the same time, they cut coal generation from 47% to about 25%. Gas grew a bit during that time but is still smaller than their remaining coal generation and even the amount of coal capacity they got rid off. Coal is going to be gone by 2030 according to the latest plans. Indeed cheap Russian gas was part of this plan until recently. But those plans are shifting rapidly now for obvious reasons.
No. Its not total power generatian its only nuclear energy's share of electricity generation in Germany from 2000 to 2020.
From 2000 to 2009, 6 years were below 30%, 5 years below 28% and 2 years below 27%, with a low of 25.9% and a high of 32.1%. If you take the 32.1% as the maximum value with 100%, that is a little over 20% fluctuation with a clear, negative trend.
In fact there is a magic wand. Germany should just drastically reduce meat consumption or at least stop growing pigs. Animal agriculture is huge energy sink. I cannot find exact numbers, but CO2 emissions from animal agriculture in Europe is bigger than emissions from all cars. And very little of it comes from animals breathing, it is energy usage that is responsible for most of it.
Pigs are especially bad since they eat basically what humans can eat. So stopping producing pigs will solve both energy and food crisis.
And if Denmark managed to stop pigs production in 1917 almost instantly when facing a war crisis [1], then surely modern Germany can do the same.
And those plans will be reconsidered in 5 years from now. Cheap Russian gas will likely flow again. And don't forget Ukrainian recent found giant gas reserves. One of the reasons for this conflict.
Don't underestimate the Germans. They'll get this done. They'll be pretty far done executing those plans in five years and probably will raise the ambition level rather than lowering it. I also predict they will trigger a pretty big economic boom doing so. All that money flowing into the economy will do a lot of good. They've actually been criticized for holding back too much in the last few decades. This looks like it might be the trigger that fixes that in a hurry.
Cheap Russian gas might make a brief comeback depending on if Russia is able to fix its leadership issues that are causing the current crisis. Right now it is looking pretty bad. But nothing that a Russian revolution wouldn't be able to fix. If that fails to happen, I doubt the Russians are going to get a lot of gas business from Europe with Putin remaining in power. Basically right now they are dealing with the stick part of this stick/carrot strategy. But even if that does happen, the message that they can't be trusted was received loud and clear. Business as usual is not going to be a thing any time soon.
Whatever they currently still receive in terms of gas revenues will start drying up either way. Oil is going to stop flowing pretty soon. And either the Russians close of the gas or the Germans will diversify their supply to the point where it won't matter if they do because the threat of the Russians cutting them off is now both very credible and completely unacceptable as a status quo.
That will make gas a lot more expensive permanently for the Germans and will only increase their ambition level with respect to reducing their dependence on it. If heating prices double or triple permanently, people are going to be pretty eager and creative getting into more cheaper ways to heat their houses. That's already happening in a lot of places.
Don’t think the Germans still know how to “get it done”. Afaik their power transmission network hasn’t received significant improvements (even though I had last read something on the subject a few years ago, maybe things have changed) and their energy prices were among the highest in Europe before this war started. I’m also very bearish when it comes to their car industry efforts to transition to EVs, but that’s a slightly different subject.
Our energy prices are designed to be high. It's not a reflection of market. It's a tool to force everyone to reduce power consumption. It's the "steering" interpretation of Öko-Steuer and friends.
After you invest a ton of money into a sustainable solution, the one thing you won't do is invest all that money again replacing it with a temporary one.
If the war lasts for long, that gas can easily become uneconomical.
Such a simplification is very hypocritical in my eyes. Even Ukraine itself is not shutting down the Russian gas pipeline on its territory "to save Ukrainian lives". And the sanctions against Russia are not so complete that the West is blocking every cooperation. For example, no one wanted to immediately stop the cooperation regarding the International Space Station "to save Ukrainian lives", because the cost would have been too high as the station might have been lost.
Reasonable politics is always about weighing effort against benefit. Of course, anyone can have her or his own opinion where to draw the line in a particular case. But it is usually not black and white. In my opinion, the German government has done an excellent job in the last months in reducing dependence on Russian primary energy imports. It rather failed in another area: military support for Ukraine.
BTW: Does anybody know whether US's extensive uranium supplies from Russia and its sphere of influence (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan)[1] have now ceased? I could not find any recent information about it.
Germany is paying hundreds of millions of euros per day to Russia for the gas. In March EU total payment was 700 million per day. This completely dwarfs any even billion dollar level support given to Ukraine. This is one quick graph that I could find.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1281568/daily-russian-ga...
On Friday, Russia stopped gas exports to Finland. Electricity export to (and import from) Finland was stopped earlier already. Was Finland in a crisis? No, most people didn't even notice, because Finland had prepared for this. It certainly would have been convenient to build our heating to depend more on cheap Russian gas, but it was restrained by law, because of the risks. Finland was willing to tolerate the inconvenience of higher energy prices, to keep its political independence and safety.
But it seems Germany is not yet capable of this introspection. Germany has been too lazy and corrupt and has let itself become very dependent on cheap Russian gas. Now it's saying "we can't do anything, we are too dependent". It's not the world's fault, it's the fault of past German governments and German voters.
Germany is an industrialized and rich nation. It can start building heat pumps if the people are ready to do it. The very recent nuclear shutdown decision can also be reversed. But it would first require admitting that you have made serious errors in the recent past and then make a turn around on those decisions.
Don't pat yourself on the back too hard. Finland just now cancelled its contract to build the Hanhikivi plant, of which a third would have been owned by Russia. The contract was finalized in late 2013, more than eight years ago. The stated reason for the cancellation was not political independence/saftey but the expected inability of Rosatom to deliver the project and increased risks due to the attack on Ukraine (https://www.hanhikivi1.fi/en/press-releases/fennovoima-has-t...).
Was Finland better prepared to ensure its energy independence? Absolutely. Nevertheless, they were about to forfeit some of the independence if Russia hadn't attacked Ukraine.
The Hanhikivi plant was controversial even before Russia's latest full on attack into Ukraine. It also wasn't moving very fast because the builder was unable to supply precise enough plans to STUK to move on. STUK is the government watchdog and is considered very strict.
The reactor dome by the way would have been forged in Ukraine.
There is a two reactor plant in Loviisa that uses the Soviet VVER technology (but not Soviet automation). It has worked very well. Olkiluoto plant's reactors 1 and 2 are from Sweden, and have had extremely high uptime. Both plants were built in the seventies. Olkiluoto 3 is the infamous French EPR that is finally coming online now.
Hanhikivi would have used an eastern-western mix of technology like Loviisa.
I would agree in 99% of cases. But when it comes nuclear power vs coal and gas, the only data I can find seems to make this issue completely black and white (at least for developed countries).
As far as I can tell, nuclear is not only safer, but even MUCH safer than coal and gas, regardless of what parameters you look at. All argument to the contrary, seem to follow one of the following patters:
- Not understanding the science and math (claims about how long used fuel will be dangerous)
- Not even tryting to understand the science and math (not willing to even listen to arguments)
- Worst case interpretation of findings (ie assuming the LNT model for cancer risk)
- Treat Nuclear as an alternative to renewables instead of as an alternative to coal and gas.
- Demanding orders of magnitude more safety from Nuclear than from other energy sources.
- Some argue that from a scientific point of view, nuclear is obviously better than coal and gas, but it is not realistic to move the public opinion
Obviously a lot of this is generated from (irrational) fear of the unknown. But there is so much of this anti-nuclear propaganda being spread, that I wonder if there could be bad actors involved. It's almost like some climate activists and politicians don't want nuclear for some other reason.
Maybe they are worried that the replacement of coal with nuclear would make people less worried about the climate, remove the support for environmentalist organizations, and that this could cost them their jobs? Or it could be that the particular people who support environmentalists happen to be especially irrational on this topic, so even if the leaders understand the science, their base would not accept nuclear energy?
> But when it comes nuclear power vs coal and gas, the only data I can find seems to make this issue completely black and white (at least for developed countries).
I think you are confusing a conclusion, which can be rendered as a Yes or No decision, with the reasons that lead to such a conclusion. Even if your own conclusion is very clear, the process of weighing pros and cons can still be quite complex and difficult. This is what I meant when I said that such issues are usually not black and white. In such debates as how best to support Ukraine or how best to care for our planet, I think one should first and foremost recognise that people, who come to a different conclusion from oneself, do so with the best ethical intentions and are perhaps no less intelligent or manipulated than oneself is. Of course, there might be a lot of people on either side which are not, but I am sure there are also a lot of people, who know there math and physics very well and nevertheless come to a different conclusion. Then the real intellectual work starts: listen, listen, listen and refine your arguments. I do not mean that you should not be allowed to completely disagree, but that showing respect to other smart people's opinions is an important individual virtue as well as an important public virtue in a democratic society, which benefits much more from a reflective style of debate than from a confrontation of We against the Others.
> I think you are confusing a conclusion, which can be rendered as a Yes or No decision
No, the decision on what energy sources to use is not a Yes or No decision, unless you are willing to seriously reduce your energy consumption. This is more like a budgeting process, where the total has already been decided. Just like in a budgeting process, where you have to choose between welfare, healthcare, defence, environmental improvement, etc, a country is not likely to significantly lower their energy consumption.
In other words, "No" to nuclear is AUTOMATICALLY "Yes" to something else. And realistically, that "else" is going to be fossil fuels, since renewables are getting a lot of funding anyway.
The way I see it, there should be a hierachy:
1. Get rid of all energy from brown coal.
2. Get rid of all energy from black coal.
3. Get rid of all energy from natural gas/oil.
4. Only then, consider shutting down, or at least stop building more capacity for nuclear.
> do so with the best ethical intentions and are perhaps no less intelligent or manipulated than oneself is
There are two different groups to compare to. One is the average voter in a country. Most of them will not understand the "math and physics" involved, unless it is provided to them in an extremely well digested form.
The main problem with this group is that they (mostly) see things as either/or, good/bad, black/white. For instance, they think something is either radioactive or not, but do understand the difference between uSv (micro Sv), mSv and SV. If someone tells them they just received a dose of 300uSv, they probably worry just as much as (of not more) than if someone tells them the dose was actually 70mSv.
Similarly, with waste, if they see a picture of low level radioactive waste form 20 years back, they think it is the same as fuel that was taken out if the reactor the day before.
Similary, they tend to think that if the waste is dangerous for 100 000 years, it is almost as dangerous after 50000 years as it is after 50 years. While in reality, around 300 years is what it takes for it to become "relatively safe", even if it is still not completely harmless.
In other words, the general public is relatively easy to mislead with propaganda. Many have a natural fear of the unknown, and for those who want to, it is easy to introduce enough complication and confusion to prevent them from accepting the scientific arguments in favour of nuclear.
Then there are people groups of people who do understand enough "math and physics" to at least have ability to understand this from first principles, if they put some energy into it. Here on HN, I would expect most to be in that category (including myself, my MSc is from particle physics). It seems to me, though, that too few of these have actually looked into the information available. That would have included me, just out of university.
An the topic of Nuclear energy vs Coal/Gas (after actually doing some investigation), the data I have been able to find, indicate that the case is almost as clear as Evolution vs Intelligent Design. The difference is simply so large (around 2 orders of magnitude or more), that even if there is significant bias/skew in the data I have available, it is not likely to be enough to alter the conclusion.
I would be happy to review sources that reach a different conclusion. But those I've seen so far have relied on such huge errors that the writers either didn't know the math/physics, or was perhaps writing it with the intent to convince the general audience, rather than in search of truth.
But by any means, if you have quality scientific sources that contradict me, I will be happy to update my view.
> the decision on what energy sources to use is not a Yes or No decision
This is not exactly what I meant. With "can be rendered as a Yes or No decision" I meant that any more-or-less question "can be refomulated, so that someone can vote either in favour or against", which is what happens when a debate needs to be brought to a practical conclusion. (Well, there is of course also the option to abstain from voting, but the question is nevertheless finally a Yes/No decision.)
> a country is not likely to significantly lower their energy consumption.
There are already a lot of laws and regulation targeting energy and resource consumption in the EU. And a lot of new ones are on the agenda. However, there might exist conflicting goals: for example, shifting towards electrical cars to lower CO2 output results in larger energy consumption, because an electrical car is much heavier than a comparable conventional one. It may not always be the best solutions that end up being implemented, but the general direction is to look not only at renewable energy, but also at energy and resource conservation.
> Similarly, with waste, if they see a picture of low level radioactive waste form 20 years back, they think it is the same as fuel that was taken out if the reactor the day before.
I think that a lot of people in Germany understand the general concept between low-level, medium-level and high-level radioactive waste quite well. My generation and people older than me were victims of Tschernobyl. We were all told that radioactive iodine was an immediate threat, but will become irrelevant very quickly. We hear that radioactive ceasum is still a problem with mushrooms and wild boars from the Bavarian Forest. The concept of its accumulation in the food chain is common knowledge.
> Similary, they tend to think that if the waste is dangerous for 100 000 years, it is almost as dangerous after 50000 years as it is after 50 years. While in reality, around 300 years is what it takes for it to become "relatively safe", even if it is still not completely harmless.
The problem for long term storage of high-level radioactive waste is that after a few hundred years, when all short and medium active material has more or less decayed, the decrease rate itself almost stoped to decrease further. The waste is then about 100 times less active than initially, but it will take between 100,000 and 1,000,000 years for the waste to reach the activity level of natural uranium ore, which itself is not yet harmless.
> In other words, the general public is relatively easy to mislead with propaganda.
We are talking here about a decade long debate in an open society, where not only ordinary people, but thousands and thousands of expert of different related fields and various opinions participated. The tale of a general public that had been mislead with propaganda is a pattern of argument that is typically used by anti-democratic movements. The general public does not consist of stupid individuals. The general public of an open society is a collective rationality where people with all their different backgrounds and level of expertise can freely debate the issues that concern everyone. Its conclusions might not be perfect and not always be right, but it is the best we can hope for. If the arguments you favour do not get through, it is not because of propaganda, but because they have not (yet) been convincing. Try again. There is always another election.
> An the topic of Nuclear energy vs Coal/Gas (after actually doing some investigation), the data I have been able to find, indicate that the case is almost as clear as Evolution vs Intelligent Design. The difference is simply so large (around 2 orders of magnitude or more), that even if there is significant bias/skew in the data I have available, it is not likely to be enough to alter the conclusion.
I would say that "Nuclear energy vs Coal/Gas" is a debate of the past. Germany wants to switch completely to renewable electrical energies by 2035 (all energies by 2045). This renders plans for new nuclear power plants obsolete. Realistically it might take one or two decades to go from planning to operation. So when the plant starts it will already be obsolet.
You might argue that in the light of the current situation, Germany's last three nulcear plants to be shut down this years should run a little longer. This option was briefly considered even by the Minister of Economic Affairs, Robert Habeck from the Green party, but quickly dropped again. There were a few voices in favour of such a proposal from the industry and the Conservative opposition, but others, even from this circles, said that it was too late to realistically postpone the shutdowns already scheduled and underway. So after a few days, no one followed up on this idea.
My second reply is on whether the decision to shut down their nuclear plants at the start of the year was the correct thing to do (the black/white reference). From your final remarks, you seem to tilt toward that they should not have been shut down:
> You might argue that in the light of the current situation, Germany's last three nulcear plants to be shut down this years should run a little longer.
(or at least, that's how I interpret "You might argue that").
From my point of view, shutting those down had been a bad decision for a while, and was still wrong. You seem to argue that even if this was considered, it shot down for political reasons. I would argue, from my limited knowledge about German politics, that it is not a surprise that the Green party would not take that path.
I suppose from the perspective of the perspective of government in Germany given the pre-existing situation as the war started, this may not be black and white.
From my perspective, and I suppose many peple who see Germany from a distance, we may see this over a longer time period, back to March 2011 and perhaps beyond. In that context (and with my view on nuclear power), shutting down the plants this spring is just the culimination of a string of bad decisions. So with my context, it was clearly wrong, even if inertia may have made it inevitable.
So I suppose it depends on perspective.
> Germany wants to switch completely to renewable electrical energies by 2035 (all energies by 2045).
Germany wants to do that, clearly. But is it realistic. I'm reading articles such as this one:
This does not instil confidence, to say the least. Also, this clearly illustrated the problem with renewables, namely their intermittent nature. For ALL energy to be provided by renewables (and not depend on non-renewable production in other countries), the grid probably needs several days consumption worth of storage capacity.
Actually getting a point where Germany is able to produce a number of GWh equal to the yearly production is quite easy by comparison. Storage is the hard part. The numbers I've seen so far, indicates that many houses with solar panels have batteries with the capacity to store 5-10 kWh, but if you want to rely on batteries for a few cold, cloudy days in the winter in a row with no wind (and addition have power for your commute in your electric BMW, at autobahn speeds), you may need ~100x that, for EACH house.
Hopefully we will se a revolution in the cost of batteries over that period, but I still consider this pretty optimistic.
I will write two answers to this, as I think it has split into two topics, first about the need for education.
> We hear that radioactive ceasum is still a problem with mushrooms and wild boars from the Bavarian Forest. The concept of its accumulation in the food chain is common knowledge.
I did a quick google of this, and found this article:
According to the article (or rather one of the linked papers), the mean radiation level for some sample of meat was 4340 Bq/kg = 0.05mSv/kg. (EDIT, mSv, not mv)
Accoring to this overview, cancer risk is not measureable below 100mSv, and gradually increasing from there:
Taken together, that means that in order to have any measureable increased risk of radiation, you need to heat 2000 kg of that kind of meat.
The maximum radiation level of meat to be sold, seems to be 600Bq/kg. At this level, you have to eat 10000kg before there is any increased risk.
By comparison, massive amounts of air polution from coal and gas plants, as well as transportation is allowed. According to this article, in Germany alone, there are 62300 yearly deaths from air polution:
Most "normies" that I know, if presented with the first article, would get the impression that eating boar would be quite risky, and many would stop eating boar because of it. If they read the last one, they would just shrug. Pollution is not nice, but it is far less scary than those becquerels.
While in in fact, if every person in Berlin would eat 5 big fat boars (200kg meat each) from the contaminated area, the risk (not counting risk from obesity) would be insignificant compared to the air they breathe every day.
When presented this way, I definitely would count this as disinformation.
> The tale of a general public that had been mislead with propaganda is a pattern of argument that is typically used by anti-democratic movements.
When I claim that the general public is being mislead, it is because I crunch the numbers (hopefully without miscalculating). Air polution very measurably increases risk of death from cancer and a number of other diseases, while the case provided for Boars, for normal intakes of Boar meat, is extremely unlikely to be measurable.
Obviously (I hope) I do not suggest that we set democracy aside. But it wouldn't hurt if educated people were more active in spreading more accurate information, to counteract what I see as fear-mongering.
> saving face is more important [for Germany] than Ukrainian lives.
I understand that the propaganda works, but lets not fall in the error of blaming Germany for this war. Germany are victims in this situation, not aggressors.
This narrative just divert the focus from the only responsible.
Paying somebody for a product will not force him/her to invest the money in crimes. Russia could have spent this money in buying ice-cream for each Russian child or anything. If they choose war crimes and promoting rape and murder instead improving the Russian's lives, is not Europe's fault.
German government was perfectly aware how Russia used money they receive for energy resources. Chechen wars, Georgia 2008, annexation of Crimea and war in Donbas 2014. Moreover, sanctions against Russia imposed in 2014 were very weak and many German companies found ways to continue to export to Russia military equipment. For example, transmissions on many Russian tanks got many German components. And Russia also has used the money to corrupt politicians in Germany.
Germany kept on increasing their dependence on Russian gas imports by building Nord Stream 2 after the first invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, instead of diversifying their gas supplies. This was an intentional and knowing decision on their part.
That depends on who you ask. Anyway, I consider him more similar to Hitler than Stalin, the way he goes after the territories of his neighbours.
From my point of view, his behaviour in 2014 was much like Hitler in 1938. What he did this year, was similar to Hitler's attack on Poland in 39.
Some people were maybe surprised in 39, but I think most reasonable people had stopped trusting him at least by the time he marched into Prague.
Just like France and England should have started much more serious rearmament after that, I would argue that EU countries should have started preparing for a conflict after 2014.
Ukraine is the victim. The main secondary victims are poor countries who depend on wheat imports.
Germany is not an aggressor, per see, but their poor judgement in their relations with Russia has certainly contributed.
Germany may point to WW2 and say "Never again", but if they insist on looking that far back, one could even argue that they made the biggest contribution of all to the apparent of Putin to surround himself with buffer states.
And while we are back in WW2, German aggression in the 1930's is one of the primary reasons everyone in Europe (except, it seems, Germany and Hungary) become so paranoid when a powerful a country start to annex it's neighbours.
Had Hitler stopped after taking the Sudetenland in 1938, modern Europeans might have been much less likely to assume that Putin would annex all of Ukraine and then proceed to Poland, the Baltics etc.
By no means to I blame modern Germans for what happened 80 years ago, but I do hope that Germany can put WW2 behind them, and do their share in contributing to stability in Europe going forward.
Imagine what the situation in Europe would be if someone like Trump wins in 2024, and decides to pull the USA out of NATO?
As I pointed out above, this would not have changed anything with respect to the need to import gas from Russia. Nuclear generation is not a substitute for gas imports.
Even worse, they can't "cancel their nuclear shutdown process" even if they wanted. First of all, the shutdown deadline had been firmly set in law twenty years ago, so it would require a major legislative effort to make another law. Second, even if they somehow managed to instantly change the law, the shutdown was "baked into" the operation and maintenance schedule for the nuclear plants. They were simply not expecting to have to run them beyond early 2020-ish so a lot of money was almost certainly saved by delaying maintenance. Hence, if they suddenly changed their minds about shutting the plants down, they'd almost certainly have to invest massive amounts of money to fix them first.
According to Wikipedia the denuclearization process was canceled until Fukushima happened.
“ On 14 March 2011, in response to the renewed concern about the use of nuclear energy the Fukushima incident raised in the German public and in light of upcoming elections in three German states, Merkel declared a 3-month moratorium on the reactor lifespan extension passed in 2010.[29] On 15 March, the German government announced that it would temporarily shut down 8 of its 17 reactors, i.e. all reactors that went online before 1981.”
And this was described as “The decision to phase-out nuclear power has been called the swiftest change of political course since unification.”
So if a disaster was all it took for a swift change in politics then the current situation is certainly a disaster.
The law I was talking about was passed in 2002, if I'm not mistaken. It specified what "remaining energy", so as to speak, would the German utilities be allowed to extract from already operating reactor units before decommissioning them, which, based on their average output, would have been around 2022-ish. I'm not quite sure how any of those things you're citing are relevant to this, since they don't say anything about repealing this law in which these things where mandated. The fact that in 2022-ish (nowadays really in 2023) Germany is going to do what Germany said in 2002 that it would do in 2022-ish hardly seems like "swift change of political course" to me.
This was just going back to the earlier phase-out decision by the red/green government. The Merkel decision to slow down the phase-out was highly controversial and would have seen mass protests. Then the Fukushima-accident (where a single earthquake was enough to take out the whole nuclear industry of an advanced industrial country) happened and the decision was reversed, again.
That's a very simplistic way to look at the situation.
At a large trade show, I once ran into a retired nuclear engineer and we had a long conversation: he had been called back into service by the state out of desperation. There weren't enough knowledgeable folks who could do safety audits of the plants for TüV. This was 14 years ago and things would be far worse today.
Restarting a complex industry (and it's ageing plants) that's been out of favor for literally decades is difficult and in this case also dangerous.
I'm a (German) physicist by training and worked at a nuclear research facility at the time.
Fair points. But maybe one could stop to ask why are there so few experts or why has the nuclear industry been out of favor for literally decades in Germany?
The anti nuclear power movement started from Denmark and they have at least two high profile nuclear startups. While they are of course not direct short term solutions to the current gas crisis, these things change how people can think about nuclear energy.
Again, so much of German writing around the subject has this very peculiar air of complete passivity, to someone looking from the outside. Things seem to just happen to Germany with no role of their own. Look outside Germany to see some counterexamples.
As far as I know in Germany any industrial equipment has to be insured for good, including any civilian nuclear operation (not, as in most other nations, with very low ceiling).
Nuclear power plants can't be used for residential heating, residential cooking, chemistry, and industrial processes like making glass for solar panels.
At least not without changing the infrastructure for that completely. Which is not going to happen overnight. And even then it can't replace chemistry.
So, no, Germany couldn't have. No matter how many Internet armchair commenters repeat this.
Nuclear power for residential and commercial real estate heating is pretty simple if it were accepted. Main issue is distance between production and consumption and then delta of heat. But later could be solved with heat pumps.
> At least not without changing the infrastructure for that completely
Was replacing that infrastructure considered when plans were made to shutdown nuclear a decade ago? At some point you have to show you're better than "armchair commenters" and actually do what needs to be done.
Regarding nuclear in Germany, I think you are a bit short on the facts. Nuclear in Germany was always pretty minor. What little they had is now nearly gone. During the same time, they cut coal generation from 47% to about 25%. Gas grew a bit during that time but is still smaller than their remaining coal generation and even the amount of coal capacity they got rid off. Coal is going to be gone by 2030 according to the latest plans. Indeed cheap Russian gas was part of this plan until recently. But those plans are shifting rapidly now for obvious reasons.