> And yet, despite all that nuclear power is incredibly unpopular here and the vast majority of ecologists want to reduce our nuclear capacity more and more.

The problem with nuclear is that they don't have the lobby and the political backing that oil and gas does.

> Germany is about to open a coal plant (partially) to take over from one of the nuclear power plants we're shutting down.

"Partially" while we fight with the russians over who gets to supply germany with natural gas.

Much of the geopolitical issues today results from the fight over who gets sell gas where and who buys gas from whom. When you supply energy to a country, you have leverage over a country. It's why we limit how much energy russia supplies to japan, korea, etc. It's why we got upset when russia built a major pipeline from siberia to china. It's also why russia wants to build more pipelines to germany/europe. It's also why iran is such a major issue ( guess who has the largest gas reserves in the world? ).

"Clean gas" isn't winning because they are "cleaner" than anything, it's because the players backing gas are much more powerful than those backing nuclear. In the near term, it will be "clean" oil and gas dominating the energy sector. Unless Trump is successful with his "clean" coal.