| "It boggles my mind that Germany made a great effort on renewable, and used this extra energy to close nuclear plants rather than coals ones. " Yes, that twisted logic annoys me as well. But beeing a german, I probably know more of the context. Anti-Nuclear movement in germany is strong for historic reasons. Top-down politics who praised nuclear power and bombs for the people, which the people disagreed and then there were clashes with police, not only from extremists, but also the very normal people who got upset [0] Also there was tschernobyl. The radioactive cloud from then went down in my area. Even today it is advised against eating mushrooms and meat from boars must be tested for radiation before it can be selled and they don't tell, how much meat is too contaminated, but probably much, as the hunters are still angry. Also there were rumors that childs born shortly after tschernobyl had a much higher chance of missformed feet for example, but I never checked for truth. A friend of mine had, and the doctors made inofficial remarks, but officially nothing bad happened, because ukraine was a brother socialist state. (but this did was not the case for western germany, so again, I never fact checked that, but the rumors are there). So there is a lot of fear. And now we come to the twisted part: most of the anti-nuclear movement is indeed also against coal. And their solution (like mine, long-term) is renewable and they don't like the fact, that renewables are not 100% ready today or tomorrow, so they say, just reduce. So basically wishful thinking and rather doing something than nothing. (even if it is not the smartest move) And btw. there is massive activism going on against coal at the moment, there is for example a forest occupied[1], which was supposed to get shoveld down for coal. And even though quite some of the protesters are lunatics, I wish them the best, as we really, really don't need more coal. But, and here comes the other important reason: money.
There are still many companys and workers and unions deeply tied to coal mining and processing. So also a strong motivator for politics ... to still use coal, despite all climate change blabla. [0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorleben [1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_Forest |