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Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

bbc.com

21–30 of 214 posts

Re: Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

#21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unreasonable. We over weigh the risk based on the exposure an accident gets, not the death toll . History shows the highest kwh per human life of any energy source.

But there's more to it than the death toll. If something goes bad this would turn a large area into a wasteland, that will be uninhabitable for thousands of years. And how would you prevent future civilizations from opening nuclear waste deposits that should not be opened? I think it's just too complex and we should look for simpler alternives.

>And how would you prevent future civilizations from opening nuclear waste deposits that should not be opened?

A depot where the waste is beats the heck out what we're doing now, which is spewing waste directly into the atmosphere, which effects everywhere.

Re: Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

#22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unreasonable. We over weigh the risk based on the exposure an accident gets, not the death toll . History shows the highest kwh per human life of any energy source.

But there's more to it than the death toll. If something goes bad this would turn a large area into a wasteland, that will be uninhabitable for thousands of years. And how would you prevent future civilizations from opening nuclear waste deposits that should not be opened? I think it's just too complex and we should look for simpler alternives.

When has any of this happened? How many did Fukushima kill?

Meanwhile fossil fuels kill millions every year and are slowly changing the habitability of the entire globe.

I like the idea that somehow a civilization thousands of years in the future will not be advanced enough to have radioactivity meters, yet we should worry more about a couple of people in this far future dying because they dug into deeply buried radioactive storage instead of getting eaten by wolves as would be more common for those future hunter gatherers.

Re: Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

#23

Freiburg is a super nice place as long as you've got disposable income to spend to live in one of the preferred quarters, like Wiehre, Herdern, etc. If you don't, then like in many south-German cities (located in mountain valleys where space is scarce), you're living in a place without any green in sight (ok Freiburg's Stühlinger is quite green, and still affordable, though I'm guessing it's been getting more expensi…

Damn. I found the pictures lovely i was thinking in finding a job in IT. But i guess i wont be able to afford a living there.

Re: Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

#24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unreasonable. We over weigh the risk based on the exposure an accident gets, not the death toll . History shows the highest kwh per human life of any energy source.

But there's more to it than the death toll. If something goes bad this would turn a large area into a wasteland, that will be uninhabitable for thousands of years. And how would you prevent future civilizations from opening nuclear waste deposits that should not be opened? I think it's just too complex and we should look for simpler alternives.

You start by reprocessing it.

By the time anyone forgets and reopens what's left after extensive reprocessing, it will be probably barely above background radiation - French nuclear waste iirc has shorter timeframe to becoming harmless than the ongoing efforts to cleanup WW1 battlefields.

Re: Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

#25

I lost interest in the city as soon as the article pointed out that the city's "environmentalism" was rooted in opposition to a nuclear power plant. This kind of thinking is backwards and self-destructive.

Not just the city, Germany made the decision to shut down ALL of the nuclear power plants when Fukushima happened. Now they found they're dependent on Russian gas.

> Now they found they're dependent on Russian gas.

They always were, maybe you don't recall the shortage in 2009 when Gazprom shut off the gas to Ukraine, which happened 2 years before 3/11 [0].

I jokingly asked if that's why they still kept their wood burning furnaces in the building I lived and why they made it a priority we knew how to keep the backofen going throughout the Winter months and while I got slight a chuckle I knew it didn't go over too well.

0: https://money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/news/international/russia_u...

Re: Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the city, Germany made the decision to shut down ALL of the nuclear power plants when Fukushima happened. Now they found they're dependent on Russian gas.

> Now they found they're dependent on Russian gas. They always were, maybe you don't recall the shortage in 2009 when Gazprom shut off the gas to Ukraine, which happened 2 years before 3/11 [0]. I jokingly asked if that's why they still kept their wood burning furnaces in the building I lived and why they made it a priority we knew how to keep the backofen going throughout the Winter months and while I got slight a c…

wondering if it got worse - if they did manage to build more nuclear plants like French did (75% from nuclear) instead of closing them all down, maybe Germany will be able to heat their homes without CO2 emissions in winter.

Re: Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

#27

I found it interesting that an article on a city is chock full of photos but only one has an easily discernible person, and they are a bike rider in the distance with their face blurred. In the photography architecture is preeminent over people.

That may be due to privacy laws in Germany, a lot of houses are blurred out on google maps for example.

Re: Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

#28

I lost interest in the city as soon as the article pointed out that the city's "environmentalism" was rooted in opposition to a nuclear power plant. This kind of thinking is backwards and self-destructive.

It may be backwards now (indeed I agree that it is backwards now, given new tech), but it was emphatically not backwards with the nuclear tech of the mid-1970s, which is when the protest of the nuclear plant project in question took place.

Re: Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

#30

Freiburg is a super nice place as long as you've got disposable income to spend to live in one of the preferred quarters, like Wiehre, Herdern, etc. If you don't, then like in many south-German cities (located in mountain valleys where space is scarce), you're living in a place without any green in sight (ok Freiburg's Stühlinger is quite green, and still affordable, though I'm guessing it's been getting more expensi…

I really want to visit some day but doesn't sound like it's what I picture in my mind as a old German town.
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