Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany actually replaced the nuclear energy with wind & solar. The argument that remains is that instead of phasing out nuclear, reducing coal would have been preferred. The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons). Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time b…
It's hard for renewables to replace coal or nuclear though, because coal and nuclear provide baseload power, whereas wind and solar are very intermittent and require basically 100% gas backup (as there will be circumstances with very low wind and solar, which tends to happen in europe on very cold, still, winter nights when demand is the highest). There is absolutely no reason the (ex-west) German nuclear power plant…
I absolutely agree with you that we need the coal plants and imports for base load. For a fully renewable grid, we need massive storage capacity. This, however, is far from an unsolved problem. The problem is that the economic incentives aren't aligned with that goal yet. There is reason to be optimistic though, and that the money Germany is saving on nuclear, is more sustainably and effectively spent on renewables and storage.