Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest | Hacker News Reader

Freiburg: Germany's futuristic city set in a forest

bbc.com

282 pointsmitchbob210 comments

Apparently, owning a car is the easiest way to commit social suicide in Vauban — That is the spirit unfortunately.

Unfortunately, because once you allow to degrade strangers/neighbors in public for something malign like that, it doesn’t stop there.

Because of this Vauban is not always admired, rather sometimes regarded as tax payer funded dystopia for upper class people to live in.

E.g. your amount of thrash you can dispose per month is highly regulated, via communal key-card opened dumpsters. Once you’ve reached your threshold, the dumpsters stay closed. If you ever where to forget, say, your toddlers diapers you have two options:

Enjoy the smell for the remaining time period or brace for the walk of shame of asking your neighbors to forgive your sin, alleviate your family from the smell and selflessly take in your diapers. Rest assured that this selflessness will at least come with an inquiry of why you aren‘t using reusable diapers in the first place.

Alas, people who are annoyed by this leave, with the share of those who think such behavior is ok ever increases.

This has been my experience with Germany / Switzerland as well. Very punishment-based

Don't know which part of Suisse you talk about, but for me, living in Zurich, Lausanne and Geneva I never experienced even a glimpse of what OP mentions.

Yes, you can't behave like an arrogant a-hole, people will complain and call services/cops on you. But if you follow few simple rules which can be summed up as 'be respectful of others and laws in the country', you can have a great time since respect goes both ways.

I understand what parent is saying and this Freiburg example is a good one: there are going to be situations and times (such as the birth of a newborn) where following strictly to the rules (you have a limited amount of trash to dispose) just isn't viable or even possible. Anything that deviates from the norm and established rules, even slightly, is at least frowned upon and at most results in a fine or some other material punishment in Switzerland (I can't speak to Germany).

No you are wrong. People living there have had children or have children. Everybody knows when making an exception is ok or not, or when the allocated trash associated to a household must be increase.

The assumption that people living there are intolerant of babies and families is false.

On top of that there wasn't, and for Geneva isn't, any allocation of trash or similar stupidity. When I was moving out of Lausanne, they introduced special garbage bags that were supposed to be used (for our bin it was 2chf per piece), to pay for recycling. Avoiding those would be fined if found out.

But if I threw out 200 of them per month, that would be my own thing. Nobody frowns, complains, cares or anything. People just go about their lives in pretty sensible ways.

In Geneva, I can throw trash in Migros plastic bags if I want, nobody cares. No clue about current Zurich, 10 years ago I didn't pay anything neither.

That's a ridiculous system. "Everybody knows when it's ok to have more baby diapers in the trash" as a temporary hallway pass is a symptom of a failed mindset.

It’s the Alemannian heritage of pietism.

The areas of Baden, the former state Freiburg was part of, and Swabia e.g. were for decades the only areas in Germany were the otherwise urbanite-higher-ed focused Green Party had success with rural/small town voters.

But pietism is associated with protestant/Lutherian christians whereas Baden is mostly catholic, isn't it?

It has more Catholics but it’s still mixed. Besides pietism being of Protestant origin doesn’t stop you from being influenced by it, no less than Swiss Catholics are influenced by Calvinism or some Indian Muslims by the caste system.

Yes, it's called social responsibility.

Vauban is very special and strange even for German eyes. But one thing is abundantly clear among many German communities:

The egocentric individualism where all the problems you produce are offloaded to some ephemeral society funded by taxes you don't want to pay is not sustainable unless you exploit external communities around you.

Right. If your job as a Phillip Morris or Nestle exec (both headquartered in Switzerland) makes people's lives a lot worse in some other part of the world but you don't leave your garbage bin out before 8pm the day before it's collected, then you're a model citizen.

Conversely if you need to do laundry in your apartment building on a holiday because you're a single parent, that's an outrage. The person leaving all the racist and xenophobic notes about respecting local traditions is a model citizen.

For a punishment-based society, I'd redirect your view to America with its high incarceration and recidivist rates. The rhetoric of "war on X" and being "tough on Y" as well as the penchant for violence is quite unique to that country. Telling someone publicly to get their act in order for the betterment of society is not very "punishment-based".

"Strafe muss sein!"

I think such behaviour is ok, but that’s because I feel that is what it means to be socially invested. But I also recognize that for other countries this might seem restrictive or weird (as in why would you do that?)

In practice, and I currently live in a socially cohesive neighborhood, in practice it is just very laidback and it’s about helping eachother out and live and let live.

As an example of the cultural difference you're talking about: I don't think this is social cohesion. This is highly intrusive: people interfering with other peoples' lives, constantly scrutinising and fault-finding, and sticking their noses in where they don't belong. To me it sounds absolutely intolerable.

> To me it sounds absolutely intolerable.

I thought of Sartre's No Exit. But for the type that would go around casting judgement on others for religious infractions in a previous age, it must be paradise.

Yeah, for a Pharisee, it would very much be their jam.

We live in a society. Although in some countries this very fact is heavily contested.

Too much freedom can be a bad thing. Especially when the government is chronically underfunded to take over the responsibilities.

I find car owners higly intrusive, driving huge, noisy, polluting machines and demanding I provide them with expensive, highly disrupting infrastructure. Cultural difference, I guess.

What are you talking about? Yes, cars are covered in the article, but if you look at the parent and GP posts in this thread - the ones I've responded to - we're clearly talking about wider aspects of living in one particular quarter.

As someone living in Germany, I also found cars in the city to be shit but they're a necessary evil for those who need to commute long distances not covered by quick and frequent public transport(like subways) since it's not like the city/government will build bike paths and public transportation to fit everyone's home2work route.

There's a bus to my workplace but it's every 30 minutes, so if I miss it, that's 30 minutes of my day wasted waiting for the next one. Or I could get a car and get there whenever I can/want and have more free time for myself at home. The choice wasn't difficult.

It sounds similar to what's known as an Home Owner Associations in the US. It seems very widespread on the internet for people to complain about HOAs. There's the superficial hatred, and then there's people who will tell you about the history and who seem to have deeper reasons for their dislike.

It would make sense to take special considerations into account, such that e.g., families with babies have a higher garbage quota than others.

Where I live, the town actually implements a variation of this: if you have a child under 3, you can apply for a "diaper subsidy" to your garbage fee, offered by the town, because they assume that you will need more bins emptied than other households (in general, you pay for how many times your bin gets emptied).

It's a cultural thing. Some people can't imagine living wihout a car, others can't imagine using disposable diapers, others can't imagine not forcing women to wear a veil. Or, for example, is your trash production a private affair, or is it a communal responsibility, subject to scrutiny?

If you're flexible you can set up your outlook however you think is best. And there are of course prevailing mindsets, depending on where you are. For me, Vauban seems closer to ideal than a lot of other places.

I think often people, who find themselves closer to mainstream, find themselves judged, or fearing judgment, from the marginal "progressives" (and vice versa). I think it's normal for this mainstream-marginal tension to exist, and it's independent of whatever the distinguishing opinions are. If the tension is getting bad, it's just a symptom of people having trouble socialising; capacity for variety is a major societal health indicator. Doesn't really say anything about the actual topics discussed, like eco-friendliness in this case.

> not forcing women to wear a veil

How the fuck does THAT fit with the other examples you gave? The word "force" in there should make it pretty clear that it's not ok or just a matter of opinion.

> It's a cultural thing.

It was just another example of cultural behavior.

It was not a normative statement.

That's easy, just paraphrase owning a car. I'm thinking something along the lines of "force the generations that are coming after you to live in a dystopian hellscape because you preferred comfort." Now it fits quite nicely.

The point is that people have different outlooks and views, and you shouldn't force yours on them (or vice versa). Your list of what is wrong is not necessarily someone else's list of what is wrong. Similarly, your list of right is not necessarily someone else's list of what is right. For many of these people, it's not a matter of "force". They (including women) accept it as the normal.

(Disclaimer: I live in Egypt, which is a Muslim country. However, it's much less strict compared to the others.)

>E.g. your amount of thrash you can dispose per month is highly regulated, via communal key-card opened dumpsters. Once you’ve reached your threshold, the dumpsters stay closed.

Do you have any source for that? I find it fascinating, but was not able to find any link about this, only that the student dorm does not have "bio"-dumpsters for compostable garbage.

https://youtu.be/rdUuJk-nDyk

It’s the most televised segment about Vauban. It takes some time until it gets to the trash bins. You have to get passed the segment of the professor talking about „communal self-Control“ if a neighbor dares to open his windows, because of the ecological burden said neighbor would unload on others. But the whole thing is worth watching.

Edit: It’s around minute 10.

That says that you have to pay extra if you want to throw in more. Nothing about having to ask neighbors. There is also always the alternative of just buying a trash bag from the city and just filling that up.

The part about neighbors keeping watch over open windows however is hilariously dystopian. Especially given my own experience with passive buildings that completely failed to live up to the hype, with air circulation that was a health hazard..

> Enjoy the smell for the remaining time period

You know, from the community's perspective, your comment could come off as incredibly self-centered and entitled. Why is it the community's responsibility to dispose of endless amounts of waste that you and your little poop monsters produce? All of those services require the community to do work for you.

The social contract is more maleable than you realize. I am not sure you want to accept that it can be renegotiated because like most of us, you've accepted an entire lifetime's worth of Western programming telling you you get to do whatever you want and everybody else has got to just deal with it, and if they have a problem with that then it's some kind of horrible encroachment.

But the reality is that people have always lived in communities that have a delicately negotiated social contract and ways of shaming, shunning, and even ex-communicating individuals who don't conform. The social contract is a negotiation, not your absolute right to do whatever you want and have people clean up after you.

> Alas, people who are annoyed by this leave.

I'd say that's WAI. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun to live there. So don't. I probably wouldn't either. But TBH it's not a lot of fun to live next to trash monkeys and junk hoarders, and communities absolutely do kick such people out.

> Apparently, owning a car is the easiest way to commit social suicide in Vauban — That is the spirit unfortunately.

That's quite possibly the most American response you could provide. Though Germans value their cars (sometimes more than their wives), German society is quite focused on public transport and the availability thereof.

Furthermore, distancing ourselves from personal cars is among one of the best things we can do for the environment. We are experiencing the effects of car ownership right now with bad air / smog, traffic jams, noise and (very avoidable) accidents. Engines might have heralded a new age and while cars do represent transportational freedom, it's time we move away from them if we want to exist in a livable world.

That's quite possibly the most American response you could provide.

Neither the Author is American, nor am I. Sometimes it seems, though, racial stereotypes are perfectly acceptable...

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 expensive in recent years). The problem with living in Vauban-style high-tech houses with photovoltaics, ground energy, etc. is the cost of maintenance, or finding people for maintenance in the first place. We really only can tell something about sustainability towards the end of life of polystyrole or mineral wool walls (30 years?).

It was a lot of fun (and quite a special experience) visiting the city. Don't have to live there.

It was wonderful to visit, but I am still a little salty about the Schlossberg. It has an incline elevator, not a funicular! And the Schlossberg tower was closed to the public. And, of course, my daughter stepped in the Bächle repeatedly. They were like a magnet for her.

I'm joking about being salty. Well, mostly. I want to go back and do more hiking. Hopefully, the tower will be open to the public, next time.

According to Wikipedia:

> It is local superstition that if you accidentally step in the Bächle, you will marry a Freiburger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburg_B%C3%A4chle

I live in Austria and it's the same. Houses in the urban forests are really picturesque and a marker for high quality of life but unless you're a 10%er millionaire they're out of reach. Everyone else is cramped in concrete blocks but of course, that's rarely shown in photos or articles.

10 m or 100k ?

Just clicking around on real estate sites, large houses with gardens in nature seem to be rather cheap there. Maybe you are in another region but with mortgage % low, the prices like [0][1][2] are far from needing to be a millionaire.

[0] https://en.arkadia.com/eden-t67035189/ [1] https://en.arkadia.com/eden-t67126374/ [2] https://en.arkadia.com/eden-t66305759/

Of course prices of old houses in need of maintenance, far away from the nearest city, in regions with little to no jobs, next to the border with Eastern European countries, will be cheap.

Nobody wants to live there.

Try looking at homes in the suburbs of desirable cities with jobs and see 10x prices.

If we're just looking for random homes on the internet you can find better deals in villages in southern Europe but there's always at least one catch why cheap homes are cheap.

> Nobody wants to live there.

Nobody besides everyone I know... I (nor my friends or family) would never want to live in or close to a city. Let alone in a suburb; if in a city then the center.

But you are right; still, to pay a 2m mortgage, you do not need to be a millionaire. And for 2m I see nice stuff in Vienna.

> catch why cheap homes are cheap.

I live in such a home in southern eu and for me there is no catch. Huge garden, swimming pool, large villa for 130k. Always sunny, nature, no polution. Just not close (40min drive; probably faster than a lot of suburb-center commutes though) to a city, that’s a benefit, not a catch.

Yeah, you don't need to be a millionaire for a 2m mortgage but you need at least a six figure salary which is nearly unattainable here, especially as an expat.

Yeah, you have swimming pools, but if you live in the cheap areas in Austria that you pointed out you compromise with underfunded infrastructure and public services(shit internet, shit infrastructure, shit schools for your kids without good teachers, almost no doctors, too far from the nearest hospital with specialists, etc.).

Do you know why? Because all good doctors and teachers move to or next to cities with opportunities, not in the middle of nowhere. That's why nobody wants to live there.

True, not for a lot of people on HN but yeah, then you are at the 10% or less indeed.

> on infrastructure and public arrives(shit internet, shit infrastructure, shit schools for your kids, no good doctors, too far from the nearest hospital with specialists, etc.)

Those things are more relevant for some than others but also true; if any of that matters enough to someone to live in a small concrete box and still work 40 hours a week then sure, go for it. I value other things like quiet, space, no stress, nature over any of the above.

Plus, how will you fund your mortgage if you chose to live in a rural area with no tech jobs? Employers here don't accept remote work outside of government mandated quarantine.

That is the same in NL and DE, however, I have never worked in an office and I have been professionally coding for 30 years, mostly for Dutch companies. The ‘secret’ (it is not a secret and it works in Austria too) is to start a limited (or specifically not a 'freelance') company; 30 years ago I borrowed 20k guilders to open it (which used to cost 18k alone) and have cards, leaflets and style for letterheads etc made. Companies hire companies, especially if it looks professional. The company always had 1 employee for 30 years and I never had issues allowing to work wherever; even for large corps like ING, Kluwer and so on.

Also, a guy I hire on upwork sometimes made well over a million in the past years via that site, sitting in his house in ukraine. Without a company or anything like that; in modern times it is not so hard as it was.

You have a cool story and thanks for sharing it but how much of that is survivorship bias? Also, out of professional curiosity, how many clients did you get in Austria.

> how much of that is survivorship bias?

No idea; it's only anecdotal obviously. But not unheard of; it used to be quite normal in Germany to have small (1-2 person) GMBH's to get rather large contracts for big corps and if you have a 'real company' suddenly no-one expects you to rock up monday morning at 9. In the Netherlands it still works well, as it does in Portugal and Spain; other markets I do not know.

> how many clients did you get in Austria

1 around 17 years ago. But, at least from friends and limited experience, so excuse my personal ignorance, I understand that Austrian business is not very different from eastern germany business and I have (also had) quite a lot of clients there. I have more in the western part, but the eastern part is different in etiquette and I had the same, I guess conservative' feel 17 years ago with the Austrian company (trying to find what they are/were called).

But how did you get your customers to just let you be remote from the get go?

Here it would be impossible as, due to the culture, trust is made only through in person meetings. Nobody will just pay company for services without face-to-face meetings and on-prem presence.

There are many consultancy bureaus that don't visit. You need to have a face to face (end 80s/beginning 90s there were telephone calls, but indeed you would not get it cross the line like that) meeting(s). I still do that now. But after you discussed basically the ideas, you can go home to build the software. They don't accept that from freelancers sometimes in NL or DE either, but from 'serious companies' they do. I have not had any case where I had to sit in the office; sure, visit once per few months, but that's it. And driving/train-ing/plane-ing that is a small price to pay (company pays ofcourse).

> 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

While this is generally true, the newer districts like Vauban also feature city-owned housing that is specifically targeted to be rented by lower-income families. If you're a student there are again lots of options all throughout the city.

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.

Freiburg has many commuters working in Swiss pharma industry around Basel for the much lower cost of living so you should be ok as a single working in IT. If you even find housing, that is.

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.

Actually Freiburg has quarters with plenty of old town charm. And if that's not old town enough, you can always go to one of the smaller towns around, which should have plenty. It's an article that picks out and exaggerates one aspect of the city.

What is your idea of an old German town? Heidelberg-like romanticist buildings, medieval wooden housings, Karlsruhe-like baroque or classicist cities? Freiburg has a rather large historic center with a cathedral/monastery church and gates, plus old quarters with lots of red sandstone.

I am writing this from my room in Wiehre right now, for which I pay 300 euro per month. Ok, it's a room in a flat I share with 3 flatmates, not everybody wants to live like this, but still, even Wiehre and Herdern are hardly quarters only for the super rich.

Additionally Freiburg is so small that you can be pretty much anywhere within 15 minutes by bike, it really does not matter so much which quarter you live in.

Nice to see my neighborhood (Vauban) featured here :) It's an awesome place to raise kids as it provides an almost village-like environment, being right at the edge of the city and hence the edge of the black forest. But it also comes with the immediate benefits of a nearby regional hub and with plenty of next-door daycare/kindergarten institutions, playgrounds and a ton of other kids. This was one of the main factors that made us move back here after two years in SF.

As elsewhere, affordable, or even available housing is now an issue, in particular for families. Prices have been on a sharp increase over the last years, and although the there's quite some construction (and plans to add a whole new district) it's not keeping up with demand.

Not ITT: The obvious topic of crime in Freiburg. OK, in 2019 the lost the lead of city with most crimes per 100.000 inhabitants. But Freiburg still scored 3rd place. Freiburg has many faces and the linked article is a very selective subset of what Freiburg is. Don't be fooled.

According to [1] it placed 13th (of 40) last year with 9.798 crimes/100k inhabitants. According to [2] it was 9th in 2018.

Combining the two ([2]also lists the safest 10 cities) I question the impact for the lower parts of that list, as the difference in absolute numbers for the lower "safe" cities and the lower "dangerous" cities is quite low.

[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/200790/umfrag...

[2] https://www.allianzdirect.de/hausratversicherung/gefaehrlich...

Note: [1] switched from public to premium staitstic for me when opening it for a second and third time...

City with most crimes worldwide?

According to stats from 2018 it was only number one in Baden-Wurttemberg, not even all of Germany.

https://www.chilli-freiburg.de/stadtgeplauder/politik-wirtsc...

It still seems to be relatively safe.

What explains the high rate of crime there?

bicycle theft maybe? 34% of people living in Freiburg do their daily commute on a bike and I guess most households own 2-3 bikes. I couldn't find any statistics, but Münster, for example, also has a bike usage of >40% and they have a horrendous crime statistic beacuse of bike theft (on average 13 people will have their bikes stolen each day).

Lived there for about a year, reasonably close to the center; but moved to a smaller country side village once our son was born.

It was very nice to have the Black Forest right around the corner but the city had an icky hipster vibe from my experience.

Consider Baden then, my backyard was facing the Black Forrest, I could see what appeared to be a skiing slope lift and on clear day you could see castle from my room and when I was working outdoors. It's my favorite part of Baden-Wuttenberg and of all Germany really. But, as someone above mentioned its rather expensive, not Switzerland expensive, but still pretty expensive.

The recent Netflix series Biohackers [1] was essentially just one big promo for Freiburg, perhaps trying to compete with Berlin in 'coolness' factor for Gen Z?

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atHBOUvgBI8

Also home to SmashingMagazine. Attended their conference there in 2012, and I left with a very positive impression of the city.

Didn't know they're based in Germany. Several years ago it is THE web I need to check everyday haha.

It was one of the first sites I used even when I was learning the basics of Illustrator and InDesign techniques about 12 years ago. I still get their newsletter and check the site every so often, particularly when it comes to CSS techniques (as well as css-tricks).

400km of bike trails is an insane amount for a small town, assuming they aren’t counting bike lanes. I doubt any of the 1M+ pop cities I’ve lived in came anywhere close to that in bike or MUTs.

Oulu, a 200k town in Finland, claims to have 600 km. It still could do with some more bike paths and improvements to the existing ones, but it is at a level where almost all places are reasonably easy to access by bicycle.

You can't compare a Finnish city/municipality with a German one. In Germany it's often 5-6 km to the next municipality. In Finland it's 5-6 km to the next residential area in the (few) big cities.

I'd guess the coverage of bike paths in Freiburg and Oulu might be very similar. It's the cities that are not comparable. Finnish municipalities often have the size of German county (Landkreis), but not even the population of a German city.

(I have lived in Germany and Finland. But have never visited Freiburg and it's decades that I biked in or even visited Oulu the last time.)

I'd call it adequate instead.

> I doubt any of the 1M+ pop cities I’ve lived in came anywhere close to that

And this sad.

> I'd call it adequate instead.

It's above average for sure. As a counterexample, take the city of Münster, which covers twice the area of Freiburg and is often praised as one of the most bike-friendly cities in Germany. It only claims to have 300km of bike lanes.

> > I doubt any of the 1M+ pop cities I’ve lived in came anywhere close to that

> And this sad.

There are a lot of 1M+ cities that have more than that. Just from personal experience:

* Munich - 1,200 km

* Berlin - 422 km

* Toronto - 973 km

* Metro Vancouver - 4,600 km

But comparing the cumulative length of bike-paths is a bit of a silly comparison anyway.

I don't think it's that silly if you compare it to the cumulative length of roads for cars

In spite of the obvious conclusion that the rights of pedestrians have won out over cars in Freiburg, the lasting memory I have of my visit is of people waiting obediently on the kerb of an entirely empty road because the green light to cross hadn't come on yet

I'm german and I often wait there too.

As long as I can remember thinking about this, I've seen it as habitual practice of self-control, i.e. practising self-control by not giving in to the urge to cross the street early - and automatically on top of that because it became a habit long ago.

I guess at the end of the day they are Germans lol

Part of this is showing to children that there are rules and the rules should be followed. If there are a bunch of people waiting and no kids around, it takes just one to step into the road and the rest will follow. If you do the same with kids watching you, somebody will yell at you.

Fun fact: There is a new series which places it's stories in Freiburg: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9849210/

This resembles student life in that city quite good except the fucking housing market. Where it is really a pain to find an affordable shared flat.

Do they still have the cool little water channels flowing through the city center streets?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburg_B%C3%A4chle

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.

Privacy laws are the same nowaday all over EU more or less (the are some national differences). The difference is that the awareness for privacy in Germany has been much higher at least since the early 1990s when a census was declared unconstitutional in supreme court. A long time becfore surveillance capitalism was thing. Germany probably has the biggest share of people opposing Google in all markets they operate in. And still one of the bigger Firefox market shares.

Sad that the awareness makes very little difference. Looking at CryptoAG, Maximator, etc. Germany is one of the worst sinners right below UK and US.

What's that about Maximator?

Spooks meeting in a pub, backstaging deals, while drinking (strong) beer of that brand.

For some reason hyper minimalism comes to mind :) http://www.cc.com/video-clips/2zifz2/upright-citizens-brigad...

When I think of futuristic, I think of anything but Freiburg.

"Freiburg: the German citiy whose politics align best with our (the BBC's) ideology" would have been a more accurate title.

They have some bicycles and some solar cells, and the major is from the leftist Green party.

Well, yeah. Good luck with that. -- California

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...

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.

> 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.

Once a scarfy, always a scarfy.

So what was the reason for your house being cold other than the ill-timed rennovation?

Germany is a net electricity exporter, we don't "depend" on French nuclear energy. But of course, Germany is part of an Eurpean grid, so depending on the load distribution and the weather, there is a lot of inporting on exporting, because eletricity is traded across long distances. While often there is a significant amount of elektricity going to Germany, that is usually just transiting to other countries. And at other times Germany is exporting to France (which then often is transiting to the UK).

> So what was the reason for your house being cold other than the ill-timed rennovation?

I was there for my Biodynamic farming apprenticeship, and that was just what it was. It was fine, and I spent quite a bit of time there I enjoyed my time there and it taught me a lot how to cope with issues with older homes and it helped me learn to do repairs where needed.

> Germany is part of an Eurpean grid, so depending on the load distribution and the weather, there is a lot of inporting on exporting, because eletricity is traded across long distances.

I figured, but I was there not long after the phasing out period and solar was still being deployed, so much so I actually got to work on a few builds.

> Please stop spreading myths. Germany was an energy exporter for most of the last years and even to France in the last 5 years

Look at the years I listed, I was there 8 years ago not long after Fukushima. Was that still the case back then?

First of all, I want to point out that some parts you "quoted" in your answer were not written by me. It is quite a bit irritating how this appears.

And while the oldest plants were switched off after Fukushima, Germany didn't just "switch off" the nuclear production. The nuclear contribution to the electricity production gradually declined from 19% of all electricity in 2011 to 12% in 2020 so far. The next years should bring a steeper decline though, as more plants get phased out.

It always astonishes me when people see the European grid and then somehow twist it into a nation vs nation fight as if cooperating with your neighbors is a flaw and weakness.

Of course there are some antagonistic nations like Russia that would gladly take advantage of a one sided deal but most countries in the EU are not like that.

> 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.

That is highly unusual for Germany - and most probably you'd be eligible for major reductions in rent paid until the landlord fixes this (depends on the actual temperatures attainable with the heat source).

Anyway, nuclear wouldn't help here: Only a tiny fraction of housing in Germany heats with electricity. It's mostly gas, central heating from power plants (with hot water pipes laid into the neighborhoods), or geothermal.

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

Please stop spreading myths. Germany was an energy exporter for most of the last years and even to France in the last 5 years [1]. And it's not that we just export in summer and import in winter [2].

[2] https://www.energy-charts.de/exchange.htm?source=de_ce&year=... [2]: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

Did you have Eisblumen / frost patterns on the inside of the windows, too?

Whee! Fractals for free!

Well, in the past it might have been an option go build more nuclear power plants, but today it isn't. And that is for a simple reason: no one can afford to build new nuclear power plants. Take France: France really depends on nuclear energy and have a fleet of aging plants. They needed to be replaced, but France is not able to do that. They have a single power plant in construction, but it is overrunning costs by far. They would have to replace over 50 plants, yet there are no plans doing so. So even France is exiting nuclear, when the aged plants have to be shut down. They are frightingly extending their life times, so I hoep the shutting down doesn't come by a "mishap" and makes southern Germany uninhabitable.

> no one can afford to build new nuclear power plants

Except for China and India that is. China has 12 under construction, India has seven under construction.

Yes, how much larger is China than France? The 12 in China don't even compare to the single plant built in France right now, if you do the math. And of course, just France would need over 50 new plants, if they wanted to continue to use nuclear energy.

> The 12 in China don't even compare to the single plant built in France right now, if you do the math.

I have no idea what you're talking about. The 12 reactors under construction in China are equal to 19% of France's entire nuclear base. And those are just what China has under construction over the next four to five years.

In the 20 years it will take France to expand Flamanville, China will have deployed new nuclear capacity greater than the total installed nuclear base in France.

Well you have to divide the energy generation by the population. China has 21 times the population of France, so building 12x as many nuclear power plants isn't much. And France would need to build at least 10 right now, if they wanted to keep their ratio of nuclear power production.

> China has 21 times the population of France, so building 12x as many nuclear power plants isn't much.

They're not 12 nuclear power plants, they're reactors.

China is adding 35-40x the new nuclear power generation vs France over 20 years. It doesn't make much sense to only sample 4-5 years for such a ratio given how long it takes to build nuclear. If we only sample out to 2024-2025, France may be at zero on that scale given the endless delays in their construction. Not to mention, if we pick up the sampling after France is done their present construction, China's advantage jumps to infinite, since France won't be building anything.

You're also moving goalposts repeatedly in these comments.

First you said nobody can build nuclear today. I point out that, in fact, China and India are building nuclear just fine.

Then you say that what China is building doesn't compare to what France is doing. Then I point out that, in fact, China's 12 new reactors are considerable in output, so much so that they're equal to 1/5 of France's entire nuclear base. The output of those 12 reactors is far larger than anything France is building currently, many times over.

Then you move the goalpost again, to a matter of ratios, which I didn't dispute in the first place because it had nothing to do with what you originally claimed.

Your ratio premise requires that China stop building new nuclear power, when their plans are the opposite, they're going to keep building, whereas France is not. For China it's an ongoing process of adding.

No, completely not. Of course I am aware that nuclear power plants are still being built. For various reasons. I said, no one can afford to build nuclear power plants. That some still do, is another matter.

The thing is: France is not building enough nuclear power plants to sustain their current nuclear production levels. Finland is struggling to finish the one under construction (vast cost overruns), the UK has a single plant in production with guaranteed prices way higher than market (they want to keep nuclear capability for military reasons I guess). In the US, two half finished plants got abandoned for cost reasons.

Yes, China (and some others) still have ongoing nuclear power plant construction, but compared to the country size, their efforts are also miniscule. To get to the same level of nuclear production, China would need about 1000 plants. They are very far from that and their expansion in renewables is much larger than in nuclear.

When the Hinkley project in the UK was originally planned it probably looked like a much better calculation.

Renewables were still expensive then.

Oil prices were heading over $100/barrel - with no reason to believe they would drop.

There was a lot of hope around the new generation of automatically safe reactors.

Hinkley was supposed to be the first in a chain of new reactors, with later reactors having decreasing costs due to economies of scale and learning.

Time passed, delays accumulated, the situation changed, and I guess they just refused to adapt to the new circumstances, because they'd already spend so much money?

They not only don't build new ones, the'll close down 50% of them in favour of renewables:

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-france-nuclear-reactors-macron...

France didn't really build new plants either, the existing plants are just as old as Germany's. The one big new project under construction, Flamanville, is already way over budget, more expensive than renewables - even before taking decommissioning into account

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.

Which part of the two sentences was hateful and what is not factual in those?

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.

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.

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.

Because populism. Geiger counters were sold out a few days after it happened.

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.

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).

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.

Here are charts showing the composition of energy sources in the german power grid if someone is interested:

https://energy-charts.de/power.htm

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Do you have a source for that? I hear it all the time but can never find good data to compare.

https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html

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...

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.

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?

> 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.

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

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

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

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...

Cost in dollars is not related to negative externalities, i.e. whether something is environmentally friendly. In fact, often completely the opposite!

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#...

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.

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.

> why you aren‘t using reusable diapers in the first place.

A good question indeed?

Even the Amish use real nappies rather than messing around with reusables.

Real nappies are better for baby and toddler bums, easier for already stressed parents and more hygienic.

Reusables result in massive energy and water waste, they are a health hazard if not washed properly (many manufacturers washing instructions are very inadequate. They must be washed at a minimum of 60°C whatever your manufacturer said), release loads of microplastics and are a lot more work.

What do the Amish have to do with diapers?

They do a serious assessment of every new technology to decide if it adds value to their society. Disposable nappies are one of the few technologies they decided to use.

> Disposable nappies are one of the few technologies they decided to use.

As they don't huddle in caves without tools, the Amish use lots of technology.

They actually use fair amounts of modern technology, it's just that the things they reject are pretty central to modern mainstream lifestyle.

The Amish didn't start evaluating new technologies in the stone age. If you look at technologies invented after the hammer, of course you'll have a hammer. But you won't necessarily have a smart phone or an Echo.

Are you Procter and Gamble??

The argument for and against reusable is pretty much undecided. There also services which do the washing for you. And they are probably way more efficient than people washing at home in terms of energy used.

Anyhow, real eco-parents go diaper-less as most parents in the world. Google split-pants, elimination communication! Compared to this letting children sitting in their own feces in reusable or not-reusable nappies is pretty unhygienic.

Downvotes? I know it is a big leap for the western mind, that most human ever lived have never seen a nappy. There is a lot of problems with diapers e.g. rash etc.

There is a lot of problems with split-pants e.g. children now dribble.

It’s not all that big a leap either, there are plenty of gifs of Chinese parents utilizing split-pants to great effect.

Yes children dribble. Elimination communication helps you to not let that happen inside.

So why is this not a problem to the Chinese but you make sound like one?

And what happens outside in the urban areas other people also happen to live in?

It evidently is a problem though considering the entire Chinese middle class seem to have switched en masse to disposables, turning China into the largest diaper market in the world over the past decade or so.

Have you actually tried that, while living in a urban environment and not in the bush?

Because shit on the floor is also not really hygienic.

Lol, your baby tells you that it must go and you hold it over toilet. And yes I raised two child like that.

And pee?

... and I know the technic and I know it requires more time. And the people I know applying it .. were only partly succesfull. With the result of shit around. And pee.

Obviously for pee it is the same. Does not mean you have to do it everywhere. I would not get in an airplane without a diaper. And obviously western nursery does not work without it either.

About accidents: And then what is more unhygienic?

Feces, urine on the floor or feces, urine all around your bottom? For the first you can use almost any cleaning liquid you want, for the second even to much soap is not good.

Well, with poo it is quite easy. If you pay attention to your baby, you know, when he wants to, I can imagine it, doing without (we simply lacked the time).

But peeing he just do without warning. I would have to pay attention to him 100% the whole time - and this is not what I want or can afford.

What the fuck

Hang on are you actually accusing me of astroturfing????

How is this post allowed to stand? How do I flag it?

> Reusables [...] release loads of microplastics

Do people use synthetic reusable diapers? Why would you do that?

Absorption. Even with the fanciest microfiber reusable your babies bum is red raw after a few nights. Cotton would be appalling.

I'm not speaking in the abstract. We tried reusables.

As a father of 2 small children, we were already brought so close to our limits by the strain of it that we had to take whatever opportunity we had to ease the burden- such as using disposable diapers.

I see you don't have kids. Even with one, even when we tried to go as eco-friendly way as possible (including using washable diapers with washable paper inserts), there are limits.

Eco wash liquids are not as effective, so you end up sometimes washing twice (what's eco about that?).

Washable diapers are much less absorbent compared to regular ones, so its not an option for us for night - baby skin would be highly irritated the next morning. Same goes for more liquid poop - it would overflow very easily. And so on.

If you are en eco fanatic, then you can go that way, but in our case it would mean actively hurting our baby.

Go diaper-less, it is easy and clean. I know it is hard to imagine for the western mind. But most human ever lived, have never seen a diaper.

There are lot of wrong with diapers e.g. rash etc.

Google split-pants, elimination communication!

I kind of don't like this arguments. Most human ever lived without public health and health support. Most people lived without democracy. Western mind is ok. Western mind is great. As all other cultures. Again, I wasn't able to send my kid to kindergarten as diaper-less and the reusable diaper wasn't welcome. It's not about having western mind. It's about daily practicality which in some areas are intrinsic in our society. How was the kindergarten of your kids policy regarding being diaper-less?

I don't understand this, we used reusable nappies (diapers) for our children without any problems. The only exceptions were when were travelling.

The main threat to the planet is CO2 and human generated climate change.

How many people can find, and understand, the information about CO2 use across the total life of disposable nappies Vs cotton nappies?

EDIT: here's an example analysis. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

It's 37 pages of detailed information that looks at the total life-cycle.

> The average 2006 disposable nappy would result in a global warming impact of approximately 550kg of carbon dioxide equivalents used over the two and a half years a child is typically in nappies. The global warming impact from disposable nappies use has decreased since the previous study due to manufacturing changes and a 13.5 per cent reduction in the weight of nappies.

> The report highlights that the manufacture of disposable nappies has greater environmental impact in the UK than their waste management by landfill.

> For reusable nappies, the baseline scenario based on average washer and drier use produced a global warming impact of approximately 570kg of carbon dioxide equivalents. However, the study showed that the impacts for reusable nappies are highly dependent on the way they are laundered.

> Washing the nappies in fuller loads or line-drying them outdoors all the time (ignoring UK climatic conditions for the purposes of illustration) was found to reduce this figure by 16 per cent. Combining three of the beneficial scenarios (washing nappies in a fuller load, outdoor line drying all of the time, and reusing nappies on a second child) would lower the global warming impact by 40 per cent from the baseline scenario, or some 200kg of carbon dioxide equivalents over the two and a half years, equal to driving a car approximately 1,000 km.

> In contrast, the study indicated that if a consumer tumble-dried all their reusable nappies, it would produce a global warming impact 43 per cent higher than the baseline scenario. Similarly, washing nappies at 90°C instead of at 60°C would increase global warming impact by 31 per cent over the baseline. Combining these two energy intensive scenarios would increase the global warming impact by 75 per cent over the baseline scenario, or some 420kg of carbon dioxide equivalent over the two and a half years.

> The environmental impacts of using shaped reusable nappies can be higher or lower than using disposables, depending on how they are laundered. The report shows that, in contrast to the use of disposable nappies, it is consumers’ behaviour after purchase that determines most of the impacts from reusable nappies.

> Cloth nappy users can reduce their environmental impacts by:

  •    Line drying outside whenever possible. 
  •    Tumble drying as little as possible. 
  •    When replacing appliances, choosing more energy efficient appliances (A+ rated machines are preferred).
  •    Not washing above 60°C. 
  •    Washing fuller loads. 
  •    Reusing nappies on other children.

It's not a simple calculation.

That last suggestion would be a nightmare to parents imo.

I can tell you that the kindergarten were my kids attended in Germany, they were against reusable diapers, because it generated more job to the the educators which were already overwhelmed.

That doesn’t prevent you from using them at home though.

we did it, even if because of that we increased astronomically our water usage and humidity in our apartment trying to dry them daily. Beside a new laundry machine because the diapers. But it didn't help us when we we were on the way, traveling (train or plains) or in kindergarten. So the solution isn't binary, and people saying "just do it", either didn't though the problem through or never had kids. Fun fact, once to fly for a 30 days trip, we brought a 20 kg luggage just with reusable diapers (2 kids)

Agree. We also only do it at home (but use less energy since we’re drying them on a rack). Here it’s quite dry so the added humidity helps.

the problem was mostly to dry the diapers in the winter, mostly in the night. Heater in the living room, full of diapers.

It's a good question for proving my point.

Claiming the moral high ground should presume posession of moral basics like decency (cutting people some slack, benefit of the doubt). Even more so if the moral high ground is used to shame others pulicly or subjugate to dishonorable treatment.

If not, all the moral grandstanding is just an excuse to behave like a douche.

Thus: people who are annoyed by this leave, with the share of those who think such behavior is ok ever increases

About reusable diapers: To satisfy ethical demands in an environment without decency is never achievable. Reusable diapers? Out of what material are they made? I hope it's environmentally substainable? Were they socially responsibly sourced? Done by a company or coop? Imported from a far away overseas country or produced by your local commune? It. Never. Stops.

If you knit them yourself from cotton grew in your background, you should be safe.

Hehe, well you forgot: why diapers at all?

1) No diapers, no resources used.

2) There are cultures who just don’t use them, why so imperialistic?

3) Isn’t your disgust of the smell of old diapers just a social construct?

> The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India.

How dare you grow non-native plants in your german backyard ! This is both a remnant of colonialism AND a danger to local biodiversity.

you need to build an underground greenhouse deep enough to be under aquifers and to be geothermically heated in winter powered by an all zero emission electrical grid

But then your agricultural run off could end up in the ocean. You don't want to kill the whales, do you?

Very simple answer: reusable diapers that I have access to do not provide the user experience I would expect for such a purpose.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24458716 and marked it off topic.

Pity its genesis was anti-nuclear, but looks like mostly good stuff since.

Ban those cars!

Fear has a way of disarming logic.

I don't think it's unreasonable to fear nuclear accidents, as history has shown us.

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.

That's a valid point. Power from fossil fuels is not better. Accidents happen far more often (tankers sinking and spilling millions of liters of oil into the sea), but somehow people seem to fear fossil fuel energy a lot less.

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.

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...

> large area into a wasteland, that will be uninhabitable for thousands of years

Did you see what happened to the Chernobyl area? What you get is not wastelands but a wonderful nature reserve (with a for wildlife insignificant increase in cancer rate) that no human dares to permanently invade. For the ones that love nature over humans (that have to resettle and suffer from the exposure) it’s not a bad outcome.

Btw, the latter problem led to some interesting research since the eighties, e.g. "Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia" https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6705990

Which history?

Chernobyl, Fukushima, and a long list of smaller accidents: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accide...

I'm not sure Fukushima was at all problematic. Most People are confused as hell because there was massive tsunami damage and it all got subconsciously jumbled together.

It was rated a 7 (major accident) by the IAEA. The only other incident with that rating was Chernobyl.

Of course it isn't. The issue is that the majority of fear against nuclear comes from nuclear weapons and improper management. People have erroneously thought that nuclear power technology is similar to nuclear weapon technology when they meltdown. The reality is that a meltdown isn't even close to a nuclear chain reaction. Chernobyl was an example of poor management and Fukushima was an example of poor design. These failures were not do to nuclear material.

Nuclear material is obviously dangerous when used improperly. The fear of 'fallout' has stunted the growth of a superior technology. I believe we would have made a far more significant change to C02 output if society had invested money and effort into nuclear technology instead of renewable technology. Not that I'm anti-renewable but, MSR and other nuclear technologies have the potential to be far more reliable, cost effective, and environmentally beneficial in the long run.

> The issue is that the majority of fear against nuclear comes from nuclear weapons and improper management.

But aren't these valid sources of fear?

War is still a thing and Uranium enrichment can be used for both nuclear power plants as well as nuclear weapons.

Improper management is something that is hard to control. Usually the people who live nearby a nuclear power plant have absolutely no insight into how the plant is managed. So why should they be confident in everything being fine. Human error is inevitable and has led to numerous accidents. Why shouldn't this happen again?

Absolutely, healthy fear is beyond valid. It's the fear from ignorance that I was referencing. A nuclear meltdown is not an explosion. It's literal a meltdown where the material burns through containment... there is no explosion. The fear of nuclear has prevented investment which could of resulted in far safer technologies entering the market. Technologies like Molten Salt Reactors that have passive meltdown protection[1] and thorium reactors[2] which utilized a material that can't be weaponized through enrichment. A passive safety feature in the Fukushima plant could have prevented that catastrophe.

People have a right to not approve of nuclear. I'm only saying that the technology is heavily repressed due to an uneducated public. The truth is that renewable energy will never be as cost effective as gas or oil for base load energy. Nuclear is a clear and viable option for the energy portfolio. It's a shame to see a completely valid option ignored because of unchecked fear.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

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