Ok, I'll take a guess. I'd say that you can't make the turbines big enough or shaped correctly to take advantage of this. In a dam 100% of the water needed to spin up to speed can be directed straight onto the turbines. In an average river, there is too much bypass. The river will take the easier course of flowing around the turbine. The power plant at Old River is in a special channel that is completely filled by the river turbine barge and it drops into the Atchafalaya river basin giving it more current and hydraulic head than the Mississippi River. It would be impractical to block the Mississippi in this way. It would impede traffic, catch all debris, endanger all aquatic species, and get wrecked by floods like this one. Just my opinion.
Now that is the Red I know and love! I think we will have to disagree about population growth and feeding the world and the fuel we will have to use accomplish this. I think as long as we have the unfed and poor, we will have strife on this planet and I hope the the disenfranchised do not get their hands on biological or nuclear weapons. I spent some time in Turkey on vacation and met people that did not have much but were very civilized and wanted nothing but to better their lives. I felt very fortunate to have been born in middle class neighborhood in New Orleans!
Developing alternative energy is all well and good but we cannot treat oil like it's a dinosaur that's outlived it's usefulness. No matter how much time and money is put into alternative energy development we will be dependent on oil for a long time. We should immediately start to get our own out of the ground. And your great-great grandchildren will love you for it.
i agree we cannot treat oil like a dinosaur. we have to use all energy sources to their fullest. but i agree with red on the subsidies. oil is making record profits and wind is trying to get going as a viable "other source". it will never produce what oil does and isnt something we can rely on totally, but it can be a good supplemental source. we cant let other sources fall off simply because oil is sucking up the subsidies and we cant afford additional subsidies. hell, with what oil is getting, it could be cut and then transferred, saving money and giving a healthy boost to developing wind or other alternatives.
