[jeffbee]

An SD40 locomotive can dissipate about 500kW that way, so you would need the equivalent of 2000 locomotives worth of resistors and fans to sink the 1 or 2GW or more that a fission power station produces.

[rcxdude]

If you wanted to do so continuously. If you're just handling an impulse you don't need so much, but it's gotta absorb a lot of energy quickly.