I'm old enough to remember when Chernobyl was on the news, not a fictionalised version. The initial "discard all milk production across Europe" phase lasted a few weeks, but the last restrictions in the UK took 26 years to lift: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-18299228

(it's also been in the news recently as it was right in the middle of the Russian assault on Kyiv!)

The French nuclear mix is currently 58% : https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energ... because a large number of reactors are offline: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1549986/macron-france...

There are two problems with nuclear power:

- a "black swan" low probability risk of something really bad happening, despite everyone saying it can't happen, and poisoning the surrounding area

- it's expensive, takes a long time to build, and can develop expensive problems. Many of the French reactors are approaching the end of their 50 year design life.

That said, it was definitely a mistake for Germany to close plants without a specific safety risk.

Germany is the 4th largest economy in the world with pretty regular budget surpluses. I think that's what you might call penny wise pound foolish, is there a saying like that in German?

Black swan events are nothing to make light of. I mean technically there's also a "black swan" risk of a meteor destroying the earth or monkeys flying out of my butt.

I guess they aren't that good at that whole engineering thing anymore and just can't handle this as well as the French. ;)

My argument for nuclear: the alternative low-carbon base load is grid-scale lithium ion batteries. That tech is ,(AFAIK) 10 years out from reaching both the scale and price point needed. Also note that solar and wind need enormous amounts of land.