First of all, nuclear is very expensive, but most of that cost is in the original construction, of the reactor. In the wake of Fukushima, Germany decomissioned

First of all, nuclear is very expensive, but most of that cost is in the original construction, of the reactor. In the wake of Fukushima, Germany decomissioned many already built, mature reactors that could have continued to safely and cheaply operate for decades. Shutting down pre-existing reactors and justifying it with "well, building new reactors is expensive" is at best stupid. Second of all, renewables are incredibly cheap when they're a minority of the grid. The problem is that if there's a shortfall of electricity, things get real expensive real fast. To make realistic grid-scale comparisons between renewables and nuclear power, you need to compare the cost of renewables-plus-storage against the cost of nuclear, and at that point things get a lot more nuanced and hard to compare. For instance, solar PV is the cheapest electricity you can get, but in places with a lot of preexisting solar installation it's also some of the lowest value electricity. During the middle of a sunny summer day in Germany, electricity spot prices can go negative because so much solar is being produced, but then that same night, prices shoot up because suddenly all those PVs stop producing any electricity at all. It's a bit of a race to the bottom if you don't have storage to offset those swings. ____________________________ All that said, I'm of course a big fan of renewables and I'm glad Germany is investing in them, and I think there's a bright future ahead with them. But using the low cost of solar modules and wind turbines as an argument against keeping nuclear power stations online is silly -- especially when there's still coal plants operating in Germany.