On April 15, 2023, Germany took its last three commercial nuclear power plants off the grid. Only thirteen years before then, in 2010, 17 reactors had supplied about one third of the German electricity consumption. Since then, Germany has expanded wind and solar electricity production capacity far beyond need, but its availableness remains as low as 25 % for wind and 13 % for solar power. Installed weather-dependent electricity production capacity already exceeds 200 GW, while peak demand has declined to 80 to 85 GW. Renewable droughts during dark-winter or hot-summer periods without wind, negative prices and rising imports show that surplus capacity does not mean reliable supply. In addition, the grid-expansion and system costs dominate the bill, not the turbine prices; household electricity charges have roughly tripled since 2000 and German industrial electricity prices are now among the highest in world, more than double compared to China or the USA. Nevertheless, German power-sector CO₂ intensity remains at the tenfold of that of France, which gets about 70 % of its electricity from its own nuclear plants. Former German nuclear power plant managers and the Radiant Energy Group judge that about 12 GW of existing nuclear power plants could return to the grid in three to six years for some €18 billion. Resumption of nuclear power is therefore the shorter route to lower system costs, fewer imports and lower emissions than even more mandated wind-power expansion.
