"Excuses"? If you know that your company shuts down one year from now, why would you be ordering spare parts for five years into the future? Especially if you've known that date for twenty years like Germans did?
Sure, sure, but I find difficult to believe that an industrial superpower such as Germany can't find a solution in a couple of months.
The the usual politicians' way of speaking. If there was the political will of having the nuclear power plants works, they would go and find the spare parts in a second. There's no political will (thank you Greens!) so they make up excuses.
Germany is an industrial superpower without military industrial complex and command vertical, meaning that the government is not set up to do such things quickly (in fact, I don’t think even China would be able to move that fast).