You can also use the heat directly (district heating) without having to go to electricity and back. This limits the electricity output efficiency but increases the overall efficiency of the plant. It requires changes to the turbines and the buildout of a district heating system though.

Sure you could heat with nuclear directly. Actually that sounds like something that should have been done when nuclear was in fashion. But you would have to produce a lot of new infrastructure and most of all, new nuclear plants. None of the existing nuclear plants is suitable for that.

And that is sure, while keeping the remaining nuclear power plants in service a little bit longer might be a consideration (though unlikely), investing in new nuclear infrastructure for sure isn't. There, renewables are the way to go.

Germans can barely get their heads around nuclear energy. Pumping fluids that have been anywhere near a reactor into homes will be untenable.

I don't think this is the core problem, that would have been to build a nuclear reactor so close to a major city, that you could run a pipe to it.

As you can tell from the map that's not really an issue. Nuclear power plants aren't in the middle of nowhere, they need access to an educated workforce.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-map-of-Nuclear-Power...

They aren't in the middle of nowhere, but usually quite a bit away from city centers, for safety reasons. Too far for a hot water line to be practical.

Up to 30km is no problem for water between 90-175 degrees celcius, so you reach plenty of cities.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.02.080

SMRs operating at atmospheric pressure, or otherwise more managable due to smaller scales may alleviate that.

https://waerme.hamburg/presse-media/pressemitteilungen/erneu... <- This is one such plant at the western edge of Hamburg, being remodeled for that use-case. Having recently seen workers from Statnett climbing the masts in the rain to put pilot wires to pull new wires(80MW upgrade) on one half of the masts, while hearing the 50hz-buzz about 25 to 30 meters below. Crazy Vikings! :-)