Cumulative radioactivity emitted by German coal as a result of the ban on nuclear is likely higher than the amount of radioactivity spread by the Fukushima disaster. We can also add lung issues and other pollution of the environment caused by soot.
Just 6.5% of German electricity was generated through coal last year.
By contrast Poland was ~90% for years and only just slipped below 50%.
If I had to guess why Poland never got any criticism for that while Germany was routinely pilloried by certain flavors of propaganda I would hypothesize that it was because Poland weren't humiliating the nuclear industry by swapping them with solar panels and wind turbines at 1/5th the price.
Solar panels and wind turbines are useful, but don't provide the base power a network needs to be stable, and on-demand capacity to give some flexibility. Ironically, fossil fuel electricity plants have to be built as part of renewables projects to make them viable.
This is why after having spent a trillion of euros in renewables, Germany still has the highest cost of electricity and still relies on French nuclear to stabilize their network. Same goes with Spain, that had a major blackout caused by a renewable shortfall.
Neither does nuclear power. This is why when half of the French nuclear power plants were down for unscheduled maintenance in 2022 they had to import German solar and wind energy and burn a ton of gas.
Gas, batteries, grid interconnects and pumped storage are the only things which can stabilise the grid to properly match supply with demand. There is far more money available for all of them if you don't have to spend 5x as much per kWh on nuclear power.
While the global warming denialist brigade did try to pin Spain's blackouts on too many solar panels it was actually caused by voltage control on the grid.
Its an irony that in 2022 the most problematic were the newest N4 reactors, not the oldest one.
Another irony was that already in in 2015, the French National Assembly voted that by 2025 only 50% of France's energy will be produced by nuclear plants. So in a way the nuclear reactors themself helped to fullfill the 2015 promise.
To be serious. After event in 2011 Fukushima, French nuclear energy didn't get much support from French politicians and was seen only as a necessary evil, which will be sooner or later replaced with German style energie transition. Only after the 2022 Russian invasion and stopping of Russian gas started the French politicians to understand the value of electricity source not dependent on foreign gas imports.
Germany imports all of its gas and batteries, has no significant potential for pumped storage (in relation to the size of its electricity grid).
Solar panels were not the cause of
Spain's blackout, insufficient voltage control in solar invertors was a contributing factor. Like with many serious accidents, there was not a single cause of Spain's blackout, but many factors.
France had to reduce nuclear maintenance for a long time to pay for the EU rules that forces it to give discounted nuclear electricity to private producers, which led to the situation you mentioned. Besides, french nuclear is important in stabilizing the german grid by adding/removing up to 20% power with a short delay. This leads however to increased wear on the reactors and maintenance needs.
And interestingly, you mentioned gas: in 2022 the EU went through a major energy crisis as Germany was counting on Russian gas to produce electricity. Pumped storage is finite and already maximized in Europe, same as hydro. Batteries are still unproven economically at scale.
One can accept climate change but be sceptic about the solutions pushed by the various lobbies, which led to the downfall of German's industry.
The Fukushima where there has been one death attributed to radiation exposure (lung cancer that happened years later)? And 20,000 people died as a result of the earthquake and tsunami?
In the mean time, we've sponsored the Russian war of aggression, flooding Europe with violence that led to the death of over a hundred thousand, disabled half a million, displaced 10 million, and destroyed houses and infrastructure worth hundreds of billions.
Note that I won't even write answers to all the other commenters telling me that nuclear power plants are great (they are not). I will answer you because my reply was about your comment on Russian propaganda:
1. Angela Merkel and her conservative/center coalition shut down the NPPs as a direct response to the Fukushima disaster. The NPPs in Germany were never really important (something like 10% of electricity IIRC).
2. No one in Germany even knew about fracking until we learned that communities in the US now had poisoned ground water because of it. The whole thing was instantly dead forever in Germany. Yes of course the same idiots who want NPPs back also say we should do fracking, but I don't think any of that will ever happen.
So I did not want to discuss whether these decisions were wrong or not, just wanted to point out that making Russian propaganda the reason for this is a far stretch.
Regarding your point about German/European money paying for Russian bombs: You are absolutely right and it is shameful. We should have pulled the plug on Russia 2014. Do note though that Germany had Russian fossils since like the 70`s as part of ensuring peace and transformation through trade, which yes - did not work out so well in the end.
So at least we can agree that Germany’s reliance on Russian gas has been far deadlier than all nuclear and fracking accidents combined.
Regarding your arguments:
ad 1: This happened only because public opinion had been shaped by the movements mentioned in my previous comment for the last 40 to 50 years. Otherwise, how would you explain the fact that Fukushima did not have the same effect on policy or public opinion in any of the roughly 30 other countries using nuclear power — not even in Japan? Are Germans that much more intelligent than the French, Japanese, or Finns?
ad 2: That is somewhat ironic, considering that fracking has been taking place in Germany since the 1960s.
You should stop relying on such low-resolution thinking when discussing a complex issue like German energy policy.
> You should stop relying on such low-resolution thinking when discussing a complex issue like German energy policy.
It is funny that you are criticizing my ability to reason when you are not even able to (in two comments now) even address the (as explicitly stated in my personal reply to you) single point I was making.
> This happened only because public opinion had been shaped by the movements mentioned in my previous comment for the last 40 to 50 years.
Are you implying that 1986 was a Russian propaganda plot? What/who do you mean with "movements"?
> Are you implying that 1986 was a Russian propaganda plot?
Two things can be true at the same time. Something can be objectively bad, but the magnitude of consequences can still depend on how bad actors exploit their opportunity. Ignoring that is what I refer to as "low-resolution thinking". You see Chernobyl or Fukushima and you have emotions about them and think that those emotions are shared by everyone around you, including policy makers, which must have ultimately caused the policies, because they align well with your emotions. But you completely ignore the Zeitgeist and who's been invested heavily into shaping it in their interest. (I think this is much more relevant with regard to Fukushima than Chernobyl - with the latter, Russian interests were much more focussed on deception and deflection, especially towards their satellites. Also, the ability to manipulate the West was strongly diminished by that time, especially compared with their influence on Schröder and Merkel in the 2000s/10s.)
> you are not even able to (...) even address the (...) single point I was making.
Your "single point" was actually two points, that's why you've used a numbered list... but jokes aside, I've addressed them very well:
1. the "the Fukushima disaster" was a huge wave killing >20.000, but contrary to the rest of the world, we've cared much more about the hand full of people killed by radiation (and ~2000 killed by the combination of tsunami and the incident at the NPP) - the greens even declared the 20.000 killed purely by the wave as killed by the NPP, and they do so every year on social media since. You cannot reasonably explain why Germany reacted so distinctively different than other nations without pointing to the history of the movements since the 1960s/70s, and to the interest that Russia traditionally holds in German energy policy.
2. I've also addressed your lie about fracking. Fracking is being used in Germany today and it has been in use since the 1960s. There are new regulations about which types of fracking can be performed where, using which kind of fracking agents, which are generally good regulations. Everything else is fear mongering by interested parties, such as the lobbyists for solar and wind (which I am a HUGE fan of - the technologies, not the lobbyists), and Russian assets.