Worst case if you short out all the safeties and just run it anyways is a meltdown, but Germany's reactors have containment structures. So a meltdown just means

Worst case if you short out all the safeties and just run it anyways is a meltdown, but Germany's reactors have containment structures. So a meltdown just means that the decommissioning process for your reactor has become a LOT more expensive, but it's not going to cause another Chernobyl. Similarly, if they were willing to say "fuckit, this may end up being extremely expensive in 10 years but we need it now or we freeze to death", they could start building (potentially) unsafe reactors in unapproved locations with inadequate documentation of their material supply chains and have that ready by February. Yes, there are long lead times for things like approved reactor pressure vessels. But if you're willing to go back to Hanford, Washington [0] safety standards that all goes out the window, and the math on deaths almost certainly still works out. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site