Although I was born in Heidelberg and have lived here for 18 years of my life, I had never seen the Neckar river frozen. Yet this morning, as I was cycling across Theodor Heuss bridge at a freezing -11 degrees Celsius (~12,2 °F), I finally witnessed this bold spectacle of nature for the fist time:
taken by FJM, 11 February 2012
The reason we can experience this welcome side-effect of icy temperatures again, is, of course, the shutdown of the Obrigheim nuclear power plant in 2005. For more than 40 years, the plant's cooling water had been led into the river, keeping the water temperature consistently above 0 °C. Now the gradual fading-out of nuclear power in Germany might spark a Renaissance of ice-skating in the south-west.
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