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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 o

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.

Aperocky 6y ago
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.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  That is not true on many accounts. The decision to phase out nuclear energy was taken in the beginning of the 2000 years. There was some extension of the operating time when Merkel came to power, which was taken back after Fukushima. This also affects plants which are very old, so would need to be replaced or undergo some severe modernisation anyway. There have been no new German nuclear power plants since the early 80ies. Then, Germany always depended on fossil fuels. Nuclear power was never more than 30% of the electricity mix, not counting heating and transportation. And except coal, the fossil fuels are all imported. The only energy source we can grow domestically are renewables. So yes, we depend on gas import, as this is the cleanest fossil fuel available. Currently most of it is coming from Russia, a trade which is beneficial to both countries. But there would be other sources if needed, the US is applying considerable pressure to Germany, so we buy gas from the US instead.
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    All fair, but 30% is not a small slice. All of that need to be replaced by something else, and the only thing that's quick enough to replace it was fossil fuel. Germany is also not exactly the ideal place for solar power generation. It's still leave people scratching over why you guys ditched nuclear energy. The newer version of nuclear reactors are safer than fossil when you factor in pollution, and EU itself has expertise (from France).
    - _ph_ 6y ago
      German nuclear power was not replaced by fossil fuel, but by renewables. For this year so far, 54% of the German electricity came from renewables, 12% nuclear, 21% coal. Solar alone has eclipsed nuclear with 13%. The installed solar peak capacity is 48 GW, wind is 60 GW, on windy days the production of wind power alone eclipses French nuclear output. Solar peaked at 27 GW at noon today.
      - _Microft 6y ago
        Here are charts showing the composition of energy sources in the german power grid if someone is interested: https://energy-charts.de/power.htm https://energy-charts.de/power.htm
    - lispm 6y ago
      The France expertise shows that they can't build nuclear reactors anymore. The ones they work on are many years late and costs are exploding. The French nuclear industry is centralized and state-owned/run. Not everyone wants finds that model attractive.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      Germany replaced nuclear power with renewables. The more important question is why didn't they replace fossil fuels with renewables and the answer is complicated.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > 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_ukraine/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/news/international/russia_u...
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    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.
    - Melting_Harps 6y ago
      > 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.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  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.
  - mihaaly 6y ago
    Which part of the two sentences was hateful and what is not factual in those?
    - Krasnol 6y ago
      The whole thing paints Germany as some retarded country who didn't know what they're doing and now they need Russian gas. All this neither having the dates right nor making a logical Russian gas connection. It's just a pure hate on Germany bs argument which appears all the time nuclear is the topic.
      - Aperocky 6y ago
        Look, Russian gas is just a side effect, it's fine to import Russian gas, everyone does it. But why shutdown nuclear? Yes the decision might be made in 2002, and exacerbated in 2011. The question is still not answered.
        Krasnol 6y ago
        Russian gas has absolutely not a single thing to do with nuclear energy. I repeat: it has nothing to do with it. Why shutdown nuclear? Why do you have to ask me that question when you've been ready to form such a strong opinion in the first place? Did you do no research? Didn't you at least look at the wikipedia article? Something about waste, not needing it, being expensive tech from the last century? Nothing of that came along in your research? No? The single thing that you got from your sources was: "something something Fukushima"? Didn't you at least question this at some point? Because I question your abilities to form an educated opinion here.
- Dahoon 6y ago
  It is comments like this that really shows how HN is sinking to Reddit levels. FUD is spreading like a Corona virus on a tourist ship.
- supergirl 6y ago
  i don't even have to research this to know it is false. germany just doesn't make decisions on a whim like other countries
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    I'm still waiting for an explanation of how the decision to shutdown nuclear power is correct versus however long they took to make that decision.
Bud 6y ago
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.
- stkdump 6y ago
  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.
  - brutusborn 6y ago
    Do you have a source for that? I hear it all the time but can never find good data to compare.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html
Krasnol 6y ago
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.742611.de/dwr-20-11-1.pdf https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.74261... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-germany-coal/germany-agrees-40-billion-euro-coal-exit-deal-for-states-companies-idUSKBN1ZF0OS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-germany-co... [3] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
- jamil7 6y ago
  On every article in some way related to the environment vocal pro nuclear people on HN will appear. Germany is the lastest favourite example for spreading misinformation along with discrediting renewables with FUD.
  - Krasnol 6y ago
    Yes, this is really a terrible anti-intellectual thing here. I wonder where this comes from. Is Shellenbergers propaganda bs so influential? Or maybe those failed efforts by billionaires like Gates to get hilarious amounts of cash from the Government?
lostlogin 6y ago
> 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.
ookdatnog 6y ago
Or, to paraphrase, you let a protest that occurred 45 years ago interfere with you learning about urban planning.
- merb 6y ago
  especially since 45 years ago tschernoyl happened, which DIRECTLY affected the region around freiburg aswell.
skrebbel 6y ago
Whereas "let's judge an entire city for what some inhabitants thought 45 years ago" is super constructive forward-thinking.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
amai 6y ago
Actually your kind of thinking is backwards. Nowadays nuclear energy is the most expensive way to produce electricity: Nuclear energy: 102£/MWh Gas energy: 85£/MWh Offshore wind energy: 57£/MWh Onshore wind energy: 46£/MWh Solar energy: 44£/MWh https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-30-50-cheaper-than-thought-admits-uk-government https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-30-50-cheaper...
- titzer 6y ago
  Cost in dollars is not related to negative externalities, i.e. whether something is environmentally friendly. In fact, often completely the opposite!
- Youden 6y ago
  That's based on a single report produced by the UK and I don't think it's appropriate to damn the parent commenter so harshly based on that alone. To contrast that report, in France, a country that actually uses nuclear power at scale, onshore wind is more expensive than nuclear and solar is only marginally cheaper [0]. And the renewables you mention aren't comparable to nuclear. Nuclear can be ramped up and down largely at will and doesn't really care what time of day it is or what the weather is like. Renewables need batteries. How does the cost work out when you include the energy storage needed to be as reliable as nuclear? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
  - amai 6y ago
    The parent commenters argument was based on zero reports so I think my comment was appropriate. But even your link shows for France in €/MWh in 2017: 20 Hydro power 43.24 Solar farms 50 Nuclear (with state-covered insurance costs) 60 Onshore wind 61 Natural gas turbines without CO2 capture 100 Nuclear EPR So nuclear is never cheaper than solar and only cheaper than wind if the state is covering the insurance cost! And your argument about nuclear ramping up and down at will only works, if you have enough Uranium available. Where do you buy your Uranium? How long will the Uranium reserves last? And where will you deposit the nuclear waste? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU
mistahenry 6y ago
Risk analysis requires accepting trade offs. I don’t think it’s so backwards or self destructive to not want the level of potential danger that a nuclear power offers in your backyard. The reality is that many nuclear disasters have happened and not wanting to risk irreversibly destroying your land for many generations seems like a reasonable position to hold.
_Microft 6y ago
I would have prefered to keep some nuclear as alternative carbon-free emission source but this ship has sailed. If we had wanted to have new nuclear power plants, we should have built them two decades ago. We won't get new nuclear plants in time, so better churn out solar fields and wind turbines instead as they are much quicker to build. Summary: nuclear power is done here, deal with it instead of hanging on to the past.

Aperocky 6y ago

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.

_ph_ 6y ago
That is not true on many accounts. The decision to phase out nuclear energy was taken in the beginning of the 2000 years. There was some extension of the operating time when Merkel came to power, which was taken back after Fukushima. This also affects plants which are very old, so would need to be replaced or undergo some severe modernisation anyway. There have been no new German nuclear power plants since the early 80ies. Then, Germany always depended on fossil fuels. Nuclear power was never more than 30% of the electricity mix, not counting heating and transportation. And except coal, the fossil fuels are all imported. The only energy source we can grow domestically are renewables. So yes, we depend on gas import, as this is the cleanest fossil fuel available. Currently most of it is coming from Russia, a trade which is beneficial to both countries. But there would be other sources if needed, the US is applying considerable pressure to Germany, so we buy gas from the US instead.
- Aperocky 6y ago
  All fair, but 30% is not a small slice. All of that need to be replaced by something else, and the only thing that's quick enough to replace it was fossil fuel. Germany is also not exactly the ideal place for solar power generation. It's still leave people scratching over why you guys ditched nuclear energy. The newer version of nuclear reactors are safer than fossil when you factor in pollution, and EU itself has expertise (from France).
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    German nuclear power was not replaced by fossil fuel, but by renewables. For this year so far, 54% of the German electricity came from renewables, 12% nuclear, 21% coal. Solar alone has eclipsed nuclear with 13%. The installed solar peak capacity is 48 GW, wind is 60 GW, on windy days the production of wind power alone eclipses French nuclear output. Solar peaked at 27 GW at noon today.
    - _Microft 6y ago
      Here are charts showing the composition of energy sources in the german power grid if someone is interested: https://energy-charts.de/power.htm https://energy-charts.de/power.htm
  - lispm 6y ago
    The France expertise shows that they can't build nuclear reactors anymore. The ones they work on are many years late and costs are exploding. The French nuclear industry is centralized and state-owned/run. Not everyone wants finds that model attractive.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Germany replaced nuclear power with renewables. The more important question is why didn't they replace fossil fuels with renewables and the answer is complicated.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> 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_ukraine/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/news/international/russia_u...
- Aperocky 6y ago
  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.
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > 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.
Krasnol 6y ago
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.
- mihaaly 6y ago
  Which part of the two sentences was hateful and what is not factual in those?
  - Krasnol 6y ago
    The whole thing paints Germany as some retarded country who didn't know what they're doing and now they need Russian gas. All this neither having the dates right nor making a logical Russian gas connection. It's just a pure hate on Germany bs argument which appears all the time nuclear is the topic.
    - Aperocky 6y ago
      Look, Russian gas is just a side effect, it's fine to import Russian gas, everyone does it. But why shutdown nuclear? Yes the decision might be made in 2002, and exacerbated in 2011. The question is still not answered.
      - Krasnol 6y ago
        Russian gas has absolutely not a single thing to do with nuclear energy. I repeat: it has nothing to do with it. Why shutdown nuclear? Why do you have to ask me that question when you've been ready to form such a strong opinion in the first place? Did you do no research? Didn't you at least look at the wikipedia article? Something about waste, not needing it, being expensive tech from the last century? Nothing of that came along in your research? No? The single thing that you got from your sources was: "something something Fukushima"? Didn't you at least question this at some point? Because I question your abilities to form an educated opinion here.
Dahoon 6y ago
It is comments like this that really shows how HN is sinking to Reddit levels. FUD is spreading like a Corona virus on a tourist ship.
supergirl 6y ago
i don't even have to research this to know it is false. germany just doesn't make decisions on a whim like other countries
- Aperocky 6y ago
  I'm still waiting for an explanation of how the decision to shutdown nuclear power is correct versus however long they took to make that decision.

Bud 6y ago

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.

stkdump 6y ago
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.
- brutusborn 6y ago
  Do you have a source for that? I hear it all the time but can never find good data to compare.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html

Krasnol 6y ago

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.742611.de/dwr-20-11-1.pdf https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.74261... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-germany-coal/germany-agrees-40-billion-euro-coal-exit-deal-for-states-companies-idUSKBN1ZF0OS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-germany-co... [3] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

jamil7 6y ago
On every article in some way related to the environment vocal pro nuclear people on HN will appear. Germany is the lastest favourite example for spreading misinformation along with discrediting renewables with FUD.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  Yes, this is really a terrible anti-intellectual thing here. I wonder where this comes from. Is Shellenbergers propaganda bs so influential? Or maybe those failed efforts by billionaires like Gates to get hilarious amounts of cash from the Government?

lostlogin 6y ago

> 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.

ookdatnog 6y ago

Or, to paraphrase, you let a protest that occurred 45 years ago interfere with you learning about urban planning.

merb 6y ago
especially since 45 years ago tschernoyl happened, which DIRECTLY affected the region around freiburg aswell.

skrebbel 6y ago

Whereas "let's judge an entire city for what some inhabitants thought 45 years ago" is super constructive forward-thinking.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

amai 6y ago

Actually your kind of thinking is backwards. Nowadays nuclear energy is the most expensive way to produce electricity: Nuclear energy: 102£/MWh Gas energy: 85£/MWh Offshore wind energy: 57£/MWh Onshore wind energy: 46£/MWh Solar energy: 44£/MWh https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-30-50-cheaper-than-thought-admits-uk-government https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-30-50-cheaper...

titzer 6y ago
Cost in dollars is not related to negative externalities, i.e. whether something is environmentally friendly. In fact, often completely the opposite!
Youden 6y ago
That's based on a single report produced by the UK and I don't think it's appropriate to damn the parent commenter so harshly based on that alone. To contrast that report, in France, a country that actually uses nuclear power at scale, onshore wind is more expensive than nuclear and solar is only marginally cheaper [0]. And the renewables you mention aren't comparable to nuclear. Nuclear can be ramped up and down largely at will and doesn't really care what time of day it is or what the weather is like. Renewables need batteries. How does the cost work out when you include the energy storage needed to be as reliable as nuclear? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
- amai 6y ago
  The parent commenters argument was based on zero reports so I think my comment was appropriate. But even your link shows for France in €/MWh in 2017: 20 Hydro power 43.24 Solar farms 50 Nuclear (with state-covered insurance costs) 60 Onshore wind 61 Natural gas turbines without CO2 capture 100 Nuclear EPR So nuclear is never cheaper than solar and only cheaper than wind if the state is covering the insurance cost! And your argument about nuclear ramping up and down at will only works, if you have enough Uranium available. Where do you buy your Uranium? How long will the Uranium reserves last? And where will you deposit the nuclear waste? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU

mistahenry 6y ago

Risk analysis requires accepting trade offs. I don’t think it’s so backwards or self destructive to not want the level of potential danger that a nuclear power offers in your backyard. The reality is that many nuclear disasters have happened and not wanting to risk irreversibly destroying your land for many generations seems like a reasonable position to hold.

_Microft 6y ago

I would have prefered to keep some nuclear as alternative carbon-free emission source but this ship has sailed. If we had wanted to have new nuclear power plants, we should have built them two decades ago. We won't get new nuclear plants in time, so better churn out solar fields and wind turbines instead as they are much quicker to build. Summary: nuclear power is done here, deal with it instead of hanging on to the past.