Those reactors were ancient and, even without the nuclear power phaseout, they would’ve needed to be replaced. And contrary to popular belief, they were replaced with renewables, not fossil fuels. The choice was build wind turbines and solar panels and upgrade the grid or spend the same amount of money on building nuclear reactors that still rely on imported fuel that needs to be mined in some third world country in an extremely environmentally destructive way and that, regardless of design, produce nuclear waste.
I was born in 92. My childhood (part of it, anyway) was in the 90s and I do remember the latter half of them fairly well. These things are never really clear cut, especially for people born around the “change” in generations.