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Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

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

#31
post #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.

Germany's nuclear power plants are from the 70's and early 80's. How can it be backwards now? Building new plants, while it may safer today than it was back than is just not economical when compared to renewables.

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

#32

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.

I think your parent paints a rather extreme picture. The two examples they picked, Wiehre and Herdern, are the upscale neighborhoods with plenty of mansions, and there's rather only one area with large concrete housing blocks (Weingarten). As usual, you pay a premium for the top locations but in terms of quality of living and "greenness" there are many other good spots.

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

#33
post #24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>French nuclear waste iirc has shorter timeframe to becoming harmless ...

Would like to see a link for this. Here in the US, waste continues to be shuffled around in "short-term" storage containers long past their design lifetime, on a shoestring budget:

https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2019/08/12/scandals-at-s...

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

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

They don't need to build anymore, they just import it.

I lived 30km away from Alsace, and despite us having a significant amount of solar on all of our buildings, as did most of the local community/neighborhood, it was well understood that a significant amount of Baden-Wuttenberg's energy (the 'greenest-centric' Stat of Germany) needs were just bought from France.

I don't have the figures in front of me, but I was there in 2012-13 during the transition, and I lived in an old 7 bedroom old Chateau style home that had its top floor being renovated, which was exposed to the cold winter.

We lived on the bottom floor and mainly relied on wood heat from the backofen in the center of the home to heat the rest, and when we didn't/forget to keep it goin I could literately see my breath while I laid in bed as I lived the furthest away from the source, and as someone born and raised in SoCal it was incredibly terrifying at first.

Before I wised up and figured out the heating method I often made my bed before having a shower and going to bed and I stuck a 2L glassflasch with hot water from those instant water heater kettle's. But it wasn't long before I summoned the inner pyro in me I had suppressed since my early teens.

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

#36

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.

I like how the hate train starts rolling with all the same phrases that lack even the basic facts.

Germany had a plan to get out of nuclear energy already in 2002

When Angela Merkel came into power, she rolled a part of it back. Allowing for some of the plants to run longer.

After Fukushima, this was rolled back again.

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

#37

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's quite hilarious to hear those phrases here every single time.

No it's neither backwards, nor self-destructive and never was.

Self-destructive behaviour is if you create waste you can't get rid of. Like in the case of Germany.

Backwards thinking is when you hold onto an out of date technology democratic, western countries have dropped in favour of a new, cheaper and better technology [1].

And no, as a preemptive counter-argument because it will also appear here and will be wrong: not a single coal plant would have been shut earlier than the current plan [2] to shut them all down outlines because the reason never was power but jobs in regions which are already hit by unemployment.

By now (2019) renewable energy share rose to 42,6%[3] in Germany. So when Freiburg dropped nuclear and "developed as an environmental economics and solar research hub with a packed green CV", the only backwards and self-destructive thinking here is your comment.

[1]https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.74261... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-germany-co... [3] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

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

#38

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.

> opposition to a nuclear power plant. This kind of thinking is backwards and self-destructive

I get that national grids do more than just power homes, but the article does mention the town's progressive energy policies. For example, the article mentions 'Plus energy' houses and building which feed the grid rather than draw from it. It's just not blind opposition and attempts are clearly made at reducing consumption.

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

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. They don't need to build anymore, they just import it. I lived 30km away from Alsace, and despite us having a significant amount of solar on all of our buildings, as did most of the local commu…

> I could literately see my breath while I laid in bed

I laughed. In temperate New Zealand we have some truly crap housing and this is seen in many houses during our mild winters.

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