The facts:
In the time frame 2010 to 2020, the share of nuclear energy in the German energy mix has halved, from 22% to 11%.
At the same time, the share of lignite in the energy mix has dwindled from 23% to 16%. The share of hard coal has gone from 19% to 7%.
Germany reduced its nuclear power output while at the same time reducing its coal power output by even more than its nuclear output.
Gas is up by 2 percentage points, but renewables have more than doubled their market share in 10 years time, and now make up 45% of the power mix (was 17% in 2010).
So no, Germany simply is not switching to coal (or even gas for that matter), and renewable energy production is ramping up rapidly.
Source: Agora Energiewende
Sadly "the big four" (energy companies) are influencing politics and are actively halting progress on renewables which leads to really strange effects.
My landlord installed a rather big solar system on the roof and due to its size, the energy company can decide to remotely shut it off when there's enough energy in the grid.
It's really a shame and a lot of corruption is going on there.
Also: Little to no research on energy storage was done in the last 25 years, because of all this corruption.
This has nothing to do with corruption.
In the end it has. Development and building of energy storage systems of any kind was not in the focus in the last decades because nuclear energy and coal was always "the solution" for energy problems and the big four told us not to worry about anything, so they could do their business as usual.
But we need to have the right technology to do things like that...
So a bit less than 20 years, even including the 6 years between announcing a site and actually confirming plans to go ahead with it.
The planning and getting approvals actually takes longer than the construction itself.
Another reactor of the same EPR model family that EDF is building in Flamanville, France, started construction in 2007 with commercial introduction originally scheduled for 2012 but now delayed to 2023 (no official statement with that date, but fuel loading is estimated only for the end of 2022 and it takes a few months after that). It's also five times over budget (€19.1bn, original estimate was €3.3bn, for one reactor with 1.6GW of electrical output).
Yet another one, Olkiluoto in Finland, began construction in 2005 and is also not finished, with commercial introduction planned for 2022. Its cost is estimated at €11bn, but was supposed to be €3bn originally.
The two operational ones, Taishan 1 and 2 in China, took 10 years of construction, too. It was planned to take less than 2 years.
This isn't true. The one new coal plant, bad as it is, was planned and allowed before Fukushima happened. These things change slower than the news cycle.
And Germany still is a net energy exporter, BTW, even without the nuclear plants.
Germany does not. coal usage has been going down.
As a result, Germany is now pushing coal instead of nuclear while limiting wind and solar due to legal restrictions.