Freezing to death this winter because your source of fuel oil is now your geopolitical enemy seems like a more pressing problem than the tiny amount of waste 3 plants will generate decades from now.
Please inform yourself before you say things like that. This discussion is already hard even without the constant interjection of uninformed opinions.
The decision to keep these 3 plants running or not is not about the waste, but about the fact that they were planned to shut down for years now, and there is some real hurdles to reversing that now. The impact of keeping them on is also rather small. The effort and money is more effectively spent elsewhere.
To prevent "freezing to death" would require heating, not electricity, which Germany has enough. It is the house heating that is powered by gas. And no one is going to freeze to death, the question is only the impact onto industry.
Sure. And it can. We are talking about 3GW of nuclear on a grid which has like 100GW capacity vs 60-80GW consumption. Much more, if the sun is shining or wind is blowing. Yes, it is absolutely annoying to bring back some coal plants into service and using them more overall, but those 3 plants are only a small drip into the bucket.
If they would be easy to run longer, I would be all for it. But big money is better spent into reducing the gas dependency overall.
The decision to keep these 3 plants running or not is not about the waste, but about the fact that they were planned to shut down for years now, and there is some real hurdles to reversing that now. The impact of keeping them on is also rather small. The effort and money is more effectively spent elsewhere.