Around 2010 they had 17 reactors, then they shut down 8. Last years they only had 6 running, now only 3.
Yeah, they needed gas alright, because nuclear seems so much worse...
Now, NPPs are of course pretty expensive, and purely from a $/kWh perspective it's pretty difficult for the large-scale-engineering kind of power plant (this extends to any kind of thermal plant) to compete with the cheaper renewables. But $/kWh is not everything - NPPs are plannable and commandable capacity (unless you're the French), renewables aren't, so their kilowatt-hours are not actually directly comparable.
Naturally natural gas especially in Germany is not primarily used for electricity generation, but largely for process heat, residential heating and as a chemical. A lot of that could be replaced by using electricity, but that'd be quite expensive, too. However, even though natgas isn't used primarily for electricity, due to merit order / economic dispatch the gas price has a hugely outsized impact on electricity prices. This, among with very high taxes and dues on electricity, is what causes world-record prices in Germany.
Let's face it, we're in this shit because of political shortsightedness, not because it was the best way to go.
For power generation, lignite and coal stayed about the same, gas increased from 20 to 30, oil stayed about the same. The only thing that went significantly down was nuclear going from 22.4 to 8.1.
It all depends on where your priorities are, and obviously getting rid of nuclear was more important than burning Russian stuff into the atmosphere.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37985/umfrage...
Congrats on Germany for their excellent energy management and master strategic decision to get rid of their nuclear plants. Absolute legend.
Maybe not closing nuclear would have been enough.