The renewables buildout was always tightly coupled with the nuclear phaseout in the political discourse.

The idea that you could've kept nuclear, still have the renewables buildout and close coal early wasn't a political position anyone in any relevant position was advocating for.

Right.

It wasn't a political option.

They could've done it, easily, and it was the sensible thing to do.

The slower phaseout of coal is about employment and, to a lesser degree, regional "identity" issues far more than energy.

The coal industry was at some point the country's largest. It's also older than all other in the industrial sector, since coal was the raw material fueling the industrial revolution.

As such, it became the raison d'etre for whole regions. The Ruhr area in west Germany grew from Iowa-level population density to New York State levels on coal. Unions, as a concept, got started in the coal mines. I recently saw a bunch of news broadcasts from the late 80s/early 90s and among 10 of them, eight or so featured labor issues in the sector. Until reunification, it was the most salient issue in politics.

It was right after the Fukushima disaster which was a last straw. Press coverage of nuclear energy by then was mostly negative thanks to Greenpeace and their campaigns against disposal of nuclear waste, history of Chernobyl explosion was still fresh, so politically keeping nuclear afloat was a risk. And of course, when calculating the real costs (i.e. including long-term nuclear waste storage and monitoring) it appeared not so attractive option to keep it.

There was no significant public will or movement to get out of coal 10 years ago. It was never even discussed.

Wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear. There is no solution yet to the final deposition of nuclear waste.

There may be a reduced need for final deposition, if the successive generations of reactors are good enough at recycling the fuel used by the earlier generations. I'm not sure what the limit for that is, but it might be possible to cut down on waste by a huge amount.

You know that are reactors that burns long life nuclear waste ?

Without any remainders? No? What would you call these?

Yeah, you just build peaker plants to help renewables. What are peaker plants? Fossil fuels (natural gas)

There are other means to buffer energy.