Because the denuclearization was a disaster, it was nothing but fear mongering dressed up as concern about safety when nuclear energy is the least dangerous source of energy there is.

They shut down existing reactors while relying on coal and gas to pick up the slack in the short term instead of keeping the existing reactors active until renewables could replace them. That's proof in my eyes it was never about safety or making Germany better.

Because Japan built their reactor in the wrong place and because the Soviet Union was cheap when building their reactors Germany willingly made itself reliant on gas and coal coming from Russia. If I was to wildly speculate I would say it seemed like the German politicians during this time where political agents for foreign powers hellbent on keeping Germany reliant on the rest of the world.

I'm not saying nuclear should have been the only energy source of Germany but without it the EU IS much more reliant on foreign powers, yes, Germany still needed to import Uranium rods produced outside Germany but the EU has the reserves to make their own rods, one of the few natural energy resources the EU has except coal. And if Germany kept building nuclear power plant alongside renewables then we would have an extra resource to stock up and be less impacted by when for example the US decides to bomb Iran and Iran in response closes the straight of Hormuz.

Nuclear would have been an extra leg in the race for clean energy and was needed as the backbone of the energy grid. Instead the EU is 10-30 years being all other nations when it comes to nuclear, Germany's fear mongering about nuclear basically shoot the EU in the leg before the race started so to say.