Germany decomissioned almost everything nuclear. Also a politically motivated move. Now they have the highest electricity prices in the EU.

VVER reactors have an overall good safety record so far, the trouble is this one seems botched.

Yeah, they are currently decommissioning all West German nuclear plants (initially announced by the Social-Democrat/Green government before 2005, then delayed by the Christian-Democrat/Social-Democrat government, then finally set to 2022 after Fukushima), but this is much later than 1990, when the Greifswald plant was decommissioned. Of course, that was only 4 years after Chernobyl, that may help explain the decision...

Both Greifswald and Rheinsberg were built according to German standards. East Germany even produced the reactor pressure vessels themselves.

Also, the blocks 5-8 in Greifswald were modern VVER-440/213 which are far more reliable and safe than for example the SWR-69 reactor types used in Neckerwestheim I, Kruemmel and Isar 1 which were all in operation until 2011.

> Not sure about the other ones, but the ones in (East) Germany were decomissioned presto after reunification

Which was completely unjustified. I visited that plant and the engineers there confirmed me that the VVER-440/213 is safer than all the BWR designs in West-Germany.

It is a law of engineering that every engineer will claim his code is the most efficient, his car the best and hist nuclear power plant the safest.

WWER-440 has no closed safety vessel, poor emergency cooling and no redundancy to speak of. It is a PWR design that is maybe on par with a poor western BWR. Also, all the reactors in West Germany were continually retrofitted, especially after the lessons learned due to Czernobyl. That wasn't feasible for a Sowjet design during the breakup of the Sowjet Union (while a lot was built in the GDR, there was also a lot that would have been imported).