[thrower123]

As far as I know, the French are not shutting down nuclear plants.

The Germans did shut down operating plants, for political reasons, with the excuse that the capacity would be made up in solar and wind. When that fantasy failed to materialize, they had to fall back on burning more dirty coal.

Lose-lose.

[imtringued]

You're just pulling that out of your ass now. Germany already had enough renewables to compensate for the loss of the nuclear energy. The problem with shutting down nuclear instead of coal is that it canceled out the emission reductions of deploying renewables. The amount of energy being produced by coal remained unchanged for 5 years and so did the emissions but they never added more coal capacity.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

[ZeroGravitas]

The currently announced policy is to reduce nuclear to 50% (from 75%) by 2035 as nuclear plants age out because it's cheaper and easier to replace with renewables. But within the last week they've been saying they haven't made a final decision on building any new plants and still could go 100% non-nuclear renewable if they don't get an explanation of the current cost overruns and are sure it won't happen again.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-nuclear/france-may-...