The goal of the Energiewende was not just to replace Nuclear power with renewable, but to enable a new decentralized energy landscape. Is politically harder to

The goal of the Energiewende was not just to replace Nuclear power with renewable, but to enable a new decentralized energy landscape. Is politically harder to replace coal in Germany, because it is a local form of energy - like fracked gas in the US or coal in the US. Germany does not have much oil, gas, hydro, ... resources compared to some other countries, Coal powered industry was what made the industrialization of Germany possible. In that sense the idea that coal kills people is seen in the context, where it actually ENABLED the industrialization and the big industrial areas (Ruhrgebiet, ...). In the same way nuclear before did not replace coal in Germany - instead the big four electricity giants monopolized both: nuclear and coal. Prior to the Energiewende, there was practically no renewable energy in Germany. Electricity production was in the hands of a few (four) big companies, having divided the country in four areas. A big goal was to break up this system and introduce markets for energy, where almost everyone can participate. Nuclear is a big state, top down, non-market industry. It works well with and creates those big authoritarian/centralized systems. It's also favorable in countries which either have nuclear weapons or want the option of nuclear weapons (like Japan, which has the technology, industry and could produce them within a few years, if they wanted -> Nuclear latency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency ). That Japan is restarting nuclear, means that the country struggles to restart them in meaningful numbers in the same environment as before with the same old-design reactors... Countries like France or Japan did very little for renewable energy - which is now fast growing and well suited for large regions of the world - Germany helped jump start it...