No they aren't, they are decomissioning coal plants, too, and at a much faster rate than nuclear.
From 2013 to 2020 nuclear as share of Germany's energy mix went from 17% to 13%. https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...
During the same time, coal went from 45% to 23%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany
> Germany kwh price is 2x compared to France
The difference is taxes, not production costs. Have a look at price composition for Germany: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-house...
And it is very unlikely to change on medium term (next 20 years) due to the unreliable nature of the renewable energy supply.
The result is that electricity production in France today causes around 74gCo2/kwh emission when Germany is around 469g/kwh. Meaning around 6x more emission.. and for an higher price on consumption.
[^1]: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR
> The difference is taxes, not production costs. Have a look at price composition for Germany: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-house...
Taxes are close to the same in France with close to 31% of the cost only in Taxes [2]. That along does not justify the 2x difference of price.
Also a big part of these taxes are subsidies there to support the renewable energy themselves... Which is pretty ironical considering that previous "subsidies" given to the nuclear sector where one of the main argument against nuclear in the past decade.
[2] https://en.selectra.info/energy-france/guides/electricity/ta...
And one day later it's 38.7%, which shows that daily fluctuations are quite high. Therefore my link to the 2020 average, which was 23%.
> taxes are close to the same in France with close to 31% of the cost only in Taxes [2]. That along does not justify the 2x difference of price.
Here it is in detail, the net energy prices in Germany vs. France are about the same: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
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https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
They've been steadily reducing the % of coal in their electricity usage:
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/p...
The last coal fired plant has already been built and the last one will be switched off in 2038.
You're breathing coal and gas byproducts every single day, byproducts which are taking years of life expectancy, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone, but oh god "Chernobyl bad, let's close perfectly safe and working nuclear reactors". Germany is firing up coal plants because they're decomissining their nuclear reactors in favour of intermittent energy sources (Germany kwh price is 2x compared to France), we simply don't have time to do both at the same time
> Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with.
Intermittent energy sources produce a huge amount of waste and are a pain in the ass to recycle, not even talking about how to store that energy for later use.
> Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack.
Sure, but if a country is bold enough to start attacking nuclear reactors you can be sure you're not too far from full scale war and at that point it'll just be a small detail in the vast amount of violence and destruction that will ensue.
> Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive.
There is no magic bullet here, solar and wind are also a major pain in the ass to build and maintain. We have 8000 windmills in France, we'd need 55 000 running at 100% to produce enough energy for our current use
> I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels.
Because there is no such thing
Intermittent energy sources only work if we stop using more and more energy, but since GDP = energy we're fucked [0]. We can't decommission both gas and nuclear at the same time and keep the same quality of life / growth expectations with solar and wind.
[0] https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/wha...