If, as you say, "No-one in the world has plants capable of surviving the kinds of forces that earthquake exerted" then please explain to me why reactors #5 and #6 suffered no damage in relevant safety equipment(*) despite experiencing the exact same earthequake and being flooded by the exact same tsunami, that Fukushima Daini suffered no earthquake damage in relevant safety equipment, that Onagawa - closer to the epicenter - suffered no earthquake damage in relevant safety equipment?
(*) Reactor #6 had a Mark II containment that was designed with a third, air-cooled, emergency generator that provided electricity to reactors #5 and #6, as they were interconnected. No connection existed to reactors #1 through #4 as those were part of a different building.
BTW German law follows the N+2 rule. Meaning that two generators must be available in all circumstances ON SITE (not 40km away), such circumstances including one generator being down for maintenance, another failing to start for unrecognized failures and generators failing in predicted initiating accidents like airplanes crashing or floods. There is explicit regulation to ensure diversity and redundance among the emergency generators. Most powerplants end up with 6 emergency generators distributed over the site such that initiating events can't take them out all at once.
None of this even begins to describe a situation in which two identical generators were put into the basement of the reactor building and that's it.
You completely neglect the fact that *all* the radionuclides of a nuclear bomb ends up in the ocean.
But only a small fraction (on the order of 3% give or take a factor of two) of that in Fukushima got out of the containments and of that only specific isotopes. And that's ignoring the obvious points that reactors #4 through #6 were unaffected (the spent fuel in the pool of reactor #4 is undamaged), the remainder accounts for less than half of the generation capacity and the fuel rods in the reactors had only about 200 reactor days on average.
Also, there was more than just this one bomb - a lot more. There were over 500 atmospheric nuclear bomb tests all told.
And that's why there is that concept called absorbed effective dose used to measure the biological effect of radioactivity (in sievert) - natural or otherwise. And using those, there is no question that Finland and Sweden must be evacuated in order to comply with the WHO rules setting a limit of 350mSv of absorbed effective lifetime dose, as the average there is 7mSv and 6mSv per person per year on average.
But is it "the ocean" or is the in fact the ocean floor - which would be much more plausible, as the water should have long been diluted to much lower levels.
It was thought to be fine exactly until 1972, when the first studies revealed that the BWR Mark I was insufficient in case of a meltdown. That was before reactor #2 was even finished. It was definitely included in the 1975 WASH-1400 report. This report also said that floods and tsunamis are a major danger to a nuclear power plant and must be protected against.
The Japanese did nothing about either of those points, they didn't train their staff to handle emergency situations in a station blackout. They didn't do anything remotely compatible with European or American standards to ensure availablitity of emergency power. They didn't equip their containments with filtered vents, which have been implemented in Europe since 1988. They didn't equip the containment buildings with hydrogen recombiners - those were only required by law in 2012 in Japan. In Germany (and probably other countries as well) those are required since 1993.
Tokai and Onagawa were perpared for and hit by the tsunami without major damage. The problem was known, countermeasures were known, non were required by law.
How do you say "It's your own damn fault!" in Japanese?
Also, is it even water we're talking about or is it the ocean floor?
Fuck everything about the "news coverage" of Fukushima.
There is ZERO information you can gain from such rubbish that those retards keep puking out into the public even if you know what you're talking about. This isn't even propaganda, it's worse, it's just ignorant drivel designed to say something against nuclear power, by people who don't know the least what they are takling about, just what they want to be talking against.
If the writer of an article is incapable of determining how to write meaningful data, the article isn't worth anything at all. (S)He's just a parrot of whoever wrote the original and has no understanding of what this is about.
The two american parties have long been to the very far right of European politics, with the Republicans being perfectly incapable of being a lawful party following the German constitution. From this point of view, Americans had the choice between Protofascists on the one hand and radical Nationalists on the other - with no realistic third alternative.
This kind of law is nothing but racist discrimination truely worthy of the apartheid regime the US still was under John F. Kennedy and a few presidents after and all before him. What else does it take to knock sense into Americans, to look into the mirror and see what they have become?
Now make up your mind whether this is "overrated", "troll" or "flamebait".
Because slashdot is populated by Americans who are such fervent believers in climate change, that they're putting the torch to anyone who dares to contradict their most cherished believes with sound arguments. Hence the expression "flamebait".
Seriously, whenever you hear a climate change blamed for anything at all, look into history and it fizzles the same way this hurricane does. It is perfectly normal weather, execerbated by ill-preperation and sometimes the presence of more humans than there used to be.
New Orleans is one example - flood protection was known to be deficient for decades, nobody did anything about it and 'lo... the whole city was flooded the way the Netherlands were before they started to build the kind of flood protection they have nowadays.
The Pakistan flood of the Indus in 2010 is a different example. It was smaller than the flood of 1929, but back then much less than 20mio people were affected for the simple reason that in 1929 the Pakistani population was about 22mio - while the 2010 population was about 185mio peolpe.
It's a similar story to the droughts in the atoll islands like Tuvalu, the Maldives and others - which saw their population virtually explode, doubling in population, in some cases even a fivefold increase in 60 years. It isn't hard to imagine that your drinking water reserves that were always sufficient for droughts in the past might run out when you have two or five times as many people to supply. But of course, it wasn't an unsustainable population on a marginal land causing the lack of drinking water, it was climate change.
In all those cases, I haven't seen a single newspaper or other story even attempting to understand the background of any of those stories. That's why you have people trying to put the (virtual) torch to people like me. It's not about climate change, it's about a religious cult propagated by perfectly unquestioned belief in the public sphere.
Surely that would prevent hurricans from hitting New York they way they did in 1938, 1893, 1869, 1821 and 1815.
You're fools for not protecting your cities, even after they've seen storms and destruction over and over again in the extremely short history of the USA. The kind of foolishness that only Americans can come up with. Combine that with a religious approach to just about anything and that's how you come up with nonsense like reducing CO2 emissions to prevent stuff from happening that has happened at much lower CO2 concentrations in much greater frequency and force.
You would have about $100bn to spend each year, if only the US could decide that it was enough for their "defense" to constitute 45% instead of 54% of the worlds military spending. ($600bn instead of $700bn... pre-GWB budget was under $400bn)
All the other hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons (the same phenomenon in different names) don't matter.
Climate change is currently used as a convenient lie to hide the decay of the United States of America and its inabliity to maintain or build infrastructure due to lack of any way whatsoever to raise a sufficient amount of taxes for any purpose other than its military.
BTW the fusion reactor ITER costs a whopping 10 days of US military expenditure to build and run for 30 years.
Only a miniscule fraction of german wind power is off-shore. So whatever you say is an implicit lie. Capacity factors of *all* wind power in Germany were 16.7% in 2010 and 18% in 2011. If you're incapable of calculating that from the amount of energy generated and the installed name-plate power you better get off your job.
Second:
11 EEG Einspeisemanagement
(1) Netzbetreiber sind unbeschadet ihrer Pflicht nach 9 ausnahmsweise berechtigt, an ihr Netz unmittelbar oder mittelbar angeschlossene Anlagen und KWK-Anlagen, die mit einer Einrichtung zur ferngesteuerten Reduzierung der Einspeiseleistung bei Netzüberlastung im Sinne von 6 Absatz 1 Nummer 1, Absatz 2 Nummer 1 oder 2 Buchstabe a ausgestattet sind, zu regeln, soweit
1. andernfalls im jeweiligen Netzbereich einschließlich des vorgelagerten Netzes ein Netzengpass entstünde,
2. der Vorrang für Strom aus erneuerbaren Energien, Grubengas und Kraft-Wärme-Kopplung gewahrt wird, soweit nicht sonstige Anlagen zur Stromerzeugung am Netz bleiben müssen, um die Sicherheit und Zuverlässigkeit des Elektrizitätsversorgungssystems zu gewährleisten, und
3. sie die verfügbaren Daten über die Ist-Einspeisung in der jeweiligen Netzregion abgerufen haben.
Bei der Regelung der Anlagen nach Satz 1 sind Anlagen im Sinne des 6 Absatz 2 erst nachrangig gegenüber den übrigen Anlagen zu regeln. Im Übrigen müssen die Netzbetreiber sicherstellen, dass insgesamt die größtmögliche Strommenge aus erneuerbaren Energien und Kraft-Wärme-Kopplung abgenommen wird.
(2) Netzbetreiber sind verpflichtet, Betreiberinnen und Betreiber von Anlagen nach 6 Absatz 1 spätestens am Vortag, ansonsten unverzüglich über den zu erwartenden Zeitpunkt, den Umfang und die Dauer der Regelung zu unterrichten, sofern die Durchführung der Maßnahme vorhersehbar ist.
(3) Die Netzbetreiber müssen die von Maßnahmen nach Absatz 1 Betroffenen unverzüglich über die tatsächlichen Zeitpunkte, den jeweiligen Umfang, die Dauer und die Gründe der Regelung unterrichten und auf Verlangen innerhalb von vier Wochen Nachweise über die Erforderlichkeit der Maßnahme vorlegen. Die Nachweise müssen eine sachkundige dritte Person in die Lage versetzen, ohne weitere Informationen die Erforderlichkeit der Maßnahme vollständig nachvollziehen zu können; zu diesem Zweck sind im Fall eines Verlangens nach Satz 1 letzter Halbsatz insbesondere die nach Absatz 1 Satz 1 Nummer 3 erhobenen Daten vorzulegen. Die Netzbetreiber können abweichend von Satz 1 Anlagenbetreiberinnen und Anlagenbetreiber von Anlagen nach 6 Absatz 2 in Verbindung mit Absatz 3 nur einmal jährlich über die Maßnahmen nach Absatz 1 unterrichten, solange die Gesamtdauer dieser Maßnahmen 15 Stunden pro Anlage im Kalenderjahr nicht überschritten hat; diese Unterrichtung muss bis zum 31. Januar des Folgejahres erfolgen. 13 Absatz 5 Satz 3 des Energiewirtschaftsgesetzes bleibt unberührt.
Exactly how dense are you? Of course wind power plants are being paid feed in tariffs when forced to shut down - for every kWh they could have fed into the grid, if they had not been forced to shut down.
Given your ignorance of the subject and the fact that you're calling capacity factors a myth, you either lied about your "credentials" or I should be much more afraid of Germanys future in energy than I ever thought was warranted.
I didn't come up with the braindead idea to pay feed in tariffs for shut-down plants - it was braindead German legislature. And wind turbines are regularely shut down in Germany because of overproduction. You can see it, because they don't spin and their average power production has been dropping. The owners of wnd turbines used to complain about having to shut down their turbines - hence the braindead piece of legislature to pay them anyway.
Also, if you think capacity factors are a myth, you can't be helped.
That's not what I said. It's when the wind is blowing and the turbines have to be stopped for lack of demand, when the feed in tariff keeps being paid in full. In Germany it takes 10GW of installed capacity to produce about 1.7GW on average over the year. But peak generation remains on the order of 10GW, so this happens a lot, even when the overall contribution of wind power is just a fraction of annual demand.
So, when a certain area claims to get 50% of their energy from wind power (some parts of Germany do), then what this means in real-world terms is that in good wind conditions the wind turbines produce anywhere between 2 times and 5 times as much electricity as can be consumed in the area. (Depending on the time of day and week. At night, demand is especially low, but wind will be blowing anyway) Of course, this unconsumable surplus is part of the "50%" they keep claiming, so in reality they receive much less of their energy from wind power than they claim.
Now, you may say that the energy isn't wasted, it is exported. But that's only true if you operate on a small scale. If wind power is adopted large-scale all over Europe, you'll run out of places to export your surplus to as the wind will be blowing there too. Wind is highly correlated over large areas of Europe, especially the windy ones around the north sea.
Look at Fukushima and you see everything that Germany did right with nuclear power plants:
2 emergency generators must remain in all cases, including 1 being down due to maintenance and another breaking down. This must also be the case if any damaging external events hit the power plant - usually resulting in 6 emergency generators per reactor. Japan prescribed having two emergency generators per plant in 2002. There is no further redundancy during maintenance or breakdown.
Mandatory, regularely updated comprehensive risk assessments are the norm in Germany, but were not prescibed at all in Japan. Resulting in Tokai and Onagawa power plants being protected against tsunamis, while Tepco deemed this unnecessary. The Japanese regulator NISA explicitly told companies that no training for a full power station blackout was necessary and none was conducted by Tepco. All that despite the fact that BWR containment had the necessary equipment to handle such a situation without a meltdown for good reason. Unfortunately, it takes training to do the right thing at the right time with that equipment - which is to be expected, given that we're talking about the first generation of commercial BWRs designed in the late 1950ies and early 1960ies.
Filtered containment vents for all reactors since 1988 (still none in Japan, neither in the USA btw.) Even though this was implemented too late in light of the fact that BWR containments were found to result in exactly the kind of contamination we now see in Japan in a report written in 1975 (WASH-1400), quite unlike PWR containments that would have handled a similar meltdown without major release - it was still almost a quarter of a century before the Tohoku Earthquake.
Catalytic recombiners in all reactors since 1993 (now being installed in Japan as it became law in 2012) to prevent hydrogen explosions.
Had any single one of those points been implemented in Fukushima Daiichi, this would have been sufficient to limit the release of radioactivity to small amounts affecting no more than the power plant itself.
Slashdot Mirror
The typical value is 3% not 0.5%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel
Because Strontium isn't soluble in water and simply stayed inside of the containment.
Note: Fukushima isn't Chernobyl.
There is no such unit as 1000Bq per kg?
You don't begin to see the extent of your ignorance, do you?
If, as you say, "No-one in the world has plants capable of surviving the kinds of forces that earthquake exerted" then please explain to me why reactors #5 and #6 suffered no damage in relevant safety equipment(*) despite experiencing the exact same earthequake and being flooded by the exact same tsunami, that Fukushima Daini suffered no earthquake damage in relevant safety equipment, that Onagawa - closer to the epicenter - suffered no earthquake damage in relevant safety equipment?
(*) Reactor #6 had a Mark II containment that was designed with a third, air-cooled, emergency generator that provided electricity to reactors #5 and #6, as they were interconnected. No connection existed to reactors #1 through #4 as those were part of a different building.
BTW German law follows the N+2 rule. Meaning that two generators must be available in all circumstances ON SITE (not 40km away), such circumstances including one generator being down for maintenance, another failing to start for unrecognized failures and generators failing in predicted initiating accidents like airplanes crashing or floods. There is explicit regulation to ensure diversity and redundance among the emergency generators. Most powerplants end up with 6 emergency generators distributed over the site such that initiating events can't take them out all at once.
None of this even begins to describe a situation in which two identical generators were put into the basement of the reactor building and that's it.
You completely neglect the fact that *all* the radionuclides of a nuclear bomb ends up in the ocean.
But only a small fraction (on the order of 3% give or take a factor of two) of that in Fukushima got out of the containments and of that only specific isotopes. And that's ignoring the obvious points that reactors #4 through #6 were unaffected (the spent fuel in the pool of reactor #4 is undamaged), the remainder accounts for less than half of the generation capacity and the fuel rods in the reactors had only about 200 reactor days on average.
Also, there was more than just this one bomb - a lot more. There were over 500 atmospheric nuclear bomb tests all told.
And that's why there is that concept called absorbed effective dose used to measure the biological effect of radioactivity (in sievert) - natural or otherwise. And using those, there is no question that Finland and Sweden must be evacuated in order to comply with the WHO rules setting a limit of 350mSv of absorbed effective lifetime dose, as the average there is 7mSv and 6mSv per person per year on average.
True, for some reason I estimated about 500 days since March 11 last year.
But is it "the ocean" or is the in fact the ocean floor - which would be much more plausible, as the water should have long been diluted to much lower levels.
There is about 0.0000000000000000015% of the I-131 left that was originally emitted. In short: no.
It was thought to be fine exactly until 1972, when the first studies revealed that the BWR Mark I was insufficient in case of a meltdown. That was before reactor #2 was even finished. It was definitely included in the 1975 WASH-1400 report. This report also said that floods and tsunamis are a major danger to a nuclear power plant and must be protected against.
The Japanese did nothing about either of those points, they didn't train their staff to handle emergency situations in a station blackout. They didn't do anything remotely compatible with European or American standards to ensure availablitity of emergency power. They didn't equip their containments with filtered vents, which have been implemented in Europe since 1988. They didn't equip the containment buildings with hydrogen recombiners - those were only required by law in 2012 in Japan. In Germany (and probably other countries as well) those are required since 1993.
Tokai and Onagawa were perpared for and hit by the tsunami without major damage. The problem was known, countermeasures were known, non were required by law.
How do you say "It's your own damn fault!" in Japanese?
Also, is it even water we're talking about or is it the ocean floor?
Fuck everything about the "news coverage" of Fukushima.
There is ZERO information you can gain from such rubbish that those retards keep puking out into the public even if you know what you're talking about. This isn't even propaganda, it's worse, it's just ignorant drivel designed to say something against nuclear power, by people who don't know the least what they are takling about, just what they want to be talking against.
Per kg, per cubic meter, per cubic foot?
If the writer of an article is incapable of determining how to write meaningful data, the article isn't worth anything at all. (S)He's just a parrot of whoever wrote the original and has no understanding of what this is about.
Why isn't this even surprising?
The two american parties have long been to the very far right of European politics, with the Republicans being perfectly incapable of being a lawful party following the German constitution. From this point of view, Americans had the choice between Protofascists on the one hand and radical Nationalists on the other - with no realistic third alternative.
This kind of law is nothing but racist discrimination truely worthy of the apartheid regime the US still was under John F. Kennedy and a few presidents after and all before him. What else does it take to knock sense into Americans, to look into the mirror and see what they have become?
Now make up your mind whether this is "overrated", "troll" or "flamebait".
Because slashdot is populated by Americans who are such fervent believers in climate change, that they're putting the torch to anyone who dares to contradict their most cherished believes with sound arguments. Hence the expression "flamebait".
Seriously, whenever you hear a climate change blamed for anything at all, look into history and it fizzles the same way this hurricane does. It is perfectly normal weather, execerbated by ill-preperation and sometimes the presence of more humans than there used to be.
New Orleans is one example - flood protection was known to be deficient for decades, nobody did anything about it and 'lo ... the whole city was flooded the way the Netherlands were before they started to build the kind of flood protection they have nowadays.
The Pakistan flood of the Indus in 2010 is a different example. It was smaller than the flood of 1929, but back then much less than 20mio people were affected for the simple reason that in 1929 the Pakistani population was about 22mio - while the 2010 population was about 185mio peolpe.
It's a similar story to the droughts in the atoll islands like Tuvalu, the Maldives and others - which saw their population virtually explode, doubling in population, in some cases even a fivefold increase in 60 years. It isn't hard to imagine that your drinking water reserves that were always sufficient for droughts in the past might run out when you have two or five times as many people to supply. But of course, it wasn't an unsustainable population on a marginal land causing the lack of drinking water, it was climate change.
In all those cases, I haven't seen a single newspaper or other story even attempting to understand the background of any of those stories. That's why you have people trying to put the (virtual) torch to people like me. It's not about climate change, it's about a religious cult propagated by perfectly unquestioned belief in the public sphere.
The century storm was in 1938 - all the rest was propaganda.
Sure, that's going to prevent hurricanes that have happened for thousands of years before anybody in Europe, Africa or Asia knew about America.
Think outside the box, damn it.
Surely that would prevent hurricans from hitting New York they way they did in 1938, 1893, 1869, 1821 and 1815.
You're fools for not protecting your cities, even after they've seen storms and destruction over and over again in the extremely short history of the USA. The kind of foolishness that only Americans can come up with. Combine that with a religious approach to just about anything and that's how you come up with nonsense like reducing CO2 emissions to prevent stuff from happening that has happened at much lower CO2 concentrations in much greater frequency and force.
You would have about $100bn to spend each year, if only the US could decide that it was enough for their "defense" to constitute 45% instead of 54% of the worlds military spending. ($600bn instead of $700bn ... pre-GWB budget was under $400bn)
All the other hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons (the same phenomenon in different names) don't matter.
Climate change is currently used as a convenient lie to hide the decay of the United States of America and its inabliity to maintain or build infrastructure due to lack of any way whatsoever to raise a sufficient amount of taxes for any purpose other than its military.
BTW the fusion reactor ITER costs a whopping 10 days of US military expenditure to build and run for 30 years.
Shut up you freak.
Only a miniscule fraction of german wind power is off-shore. So whatever you say is an implicit lie. Capacity factors of *all* wind power in Germany were 16.7% in 2010 and 18% in 2011. If you're incapable of calculating that from the amount of energy generated and the installed name-plate power you better get off your job.
Second:
11 EEG
Einspeisemanagement
(1) Netzbetreiber sind unbeschadet ihrer Pflicht nach 9 ausnahmsweise berechtigt, an ihr Netz unmittelbar oder mittelbar angeschlossene Anlagen und KWK-Anlagen, die mit einer Einrichtung zur ferngesteuerten Reduzierung der Einspeiseleistung bei Netzüberlastung im Sinne von 6 Absatz 1 Nummer 1, Absatz 2 Nummer 1 oder 2 Buchstabe a ausgestattet sind, zu regeln, soweit
1. andernfalls im jeweiligen Netzbereich einschließlich des vorgelagerten Netzes ein Netzengpass entstünde,
2. der Vorrang für Strom aus erneuerbaren Energien, Grubengas und Kraft-Wärme-Kopplung gewahrt wird, soweit nicht sonstige Anlagen zur Stromerzeugung am Netz bleiben müssen, um die Sicherheit und Zuverlässigkeit des Elektrizitätsversorgungssystems zu gewährleisten, und
3. sie die verfügbaren Daten über die Ist-Einspeisung in der jeweiligen Netzregion abgerufen haben.
Bei der Regelung der Anlagen nach Satz 1 sind Anlagen im Sinne des 6 Absatz 2 erst nachrangig gegenüber den übrigen Anlagen zu regeln. Im Übrigen müssen die Netzbetreiber sicherstellen, dass insgesamt die größtmögliche Strommenge aus erneuerbaren Energien und Kraft-Wärme-Kopplung abgenommen wird.
(2) Netzbetreiber sind verpflichtet, Betreiberinnen und Betreiber von Anlagen nach 6 Absatz 1 spätestens am Vortag, ansonsten unverzüglich über den zu erwartenden Zeitpunkt, den Umfang und die Dauer der Regelung zu unterrichten, sofern die Durchführung der Maßnahme vorhersehbar ist.
(3) Die Netzbetreiber müssen die von Maßnahmen nach Absatz 1 Betroffenen unverzüglich über die tatsächlichen Zeitpunkte, den jeweiligen Umfang, die Dauer und die Gründe der Regelung unterrichten und auf Verlangen innerhalb von vier Wochen Nachweise über die Erforderlichkeit der Maßnahme vorlegen. Die Nachweise müssen eine sachkundige dritte Person in die Lage versetzen, ohne weitere Informationen die Erforderlichkeit der Maßnahme vollständig nachvollziehen zu können; zu diesem Zweck sind im Fall eines Verlangens nach Satz 1 letzter Halbsatz insbesondere die nach Absatz 1 Satz 1 Nummer 3 erhobenen Daten vorzulegen. Die Netzbetreiber können abweichend von Satz 1 Anlagenbetreiberinnen und Anlagenbetreiber von Anlagen nach 6 Absatz 2 in Verbindung mit Absatz 3 nur einmal jährlich über die Maßnahmen nach Absatz 1 unterrichten, solange die Gesamtdauer dieser Maßnahmen 15 Stunden pro Anlage im Kalenderjahr nicht überschritten hat; diese Unterrichtung muss bis zum 31. Januar des Folgejahres erfolgen. 13 Absatz 5 Satz 3 des Energiewirtschaftsgesetzes bleibt unberührt.
Exactly how dense are you? Of course wind power plants are being paid feed in tariffs when forced to shut down - for every kWh they could have fed into the grid, if they had not been forced to shut down.
Given your ignorance of the subject and the fact that you're calling capacity factors a myth, you either lied about your "credentials" or I should be much more afraid of Germanys future in energy than I ever thought was warranted.
I didn't come up with the braindead idea to pay feed in tariffs for shut-down plants - it was braindead German legislature. And wind turbines are regularely shut down in Germany because of overproduction. You can see it, because they don't spin and their average power production has been dropping. The owners of wnd turbines used to complain about having to shut down their turbines - hence the braindead piece of legislature to pay them anyway.
Also, if you think capacity factors are a myth, you can't be helped.
That's not what I said. It's when the wind is blowing and the turbines have to be stopped for lack of demand, when the feed in tariff keeps being paid in full. In Germany it takes 10GW of installed capacity to produce about 1.7GW on average over the year. But peak generation remains on the order of 10GW, so this happens a lot, even when the overall contribution of wind power is just a fraction of annual demand.
So, when a certain area claims to get 50% of their energy from wind power (some parts of Germany do), then what this means in real-world terms is that in good wind conditions the wind turbines produce anywhere between 2 times and 5 times as much electricity as can be consumed in the area. (Depending on the time of day and week. At night, demand is especially low, but wind will be blowing anyway) Of course, this unconsumable surplus is part of the "50%" they keep claiming, so in reality they receive much less of their energy from wind power than they claim.
Now, you may say that the energy isn't wasted, it is exported. But that's only true if you operate on a small scale. If wind power is adopted large-scale all over Europe, you'll run out of places to export your surplus to as the wind will be blowing there too. Wind is highly correlated over large areas of Europe, especially the windy ones around the north sea.
Look at Fukushima and you see everything that Germany did right with nuclear power plants:
2 emergency generators must remain in all cases, including 1 being down due to maintenance and another breaking down. This must also be the case if any damaging external events hit the power plant - usually resulting in 6 emergency generators per reactor. Japan prescribed having two emergency generators per plant in 2002. There is no further redundancy during maintenance or breakdown.
Mandatory, regularely updated comprehensive risk assessments are the norm in Germany, but were not prescibed at all in Japan. Resulting in Tokai and Onagawa power plants being protected against tsunamis, while Tepco deemed this unnecessary. The Japanese regulator NISA explicitly told companies that no training for a full power station blackout was necessary and none was conducted by Tepco. All that despite the fact that BWR containment had the necessary equipment to handle such a situation without a meltdown for good reason. Unfortunately, it takes training to do the right thing at the right time with that equipment - which is to be expected, given that we're talking about the first generation of commercial BWRs designed in the late 1950ies and early 1960ies.
Filtered containment vents for all reactors since 1988 (still none in Japan, neither in the USA btw.) Even though this was implemented too late in light of the fact that BWR containments were found to result in exactly the kind of contamination we now see in Japan in a report written in 1975 (WASH-1400), quite unlike PWR containments that would have handled a similar meltdown without major release - it was still almost a quarter of a century before the Tohoku Earthquake.
Catalytic recombiners in all reactors since 1993 (now being installed in Japan as it became law in 2012) to prevent hydrogen explosions.
Had any single one of those points been implemented in Fukushima Daiichi, this would have been sufficient to limit the release of radioactivity to small amounts affecting no more than the power plant itself.