[advisedwang]

> I wonder how practical and safe it would be to build fusion pants close to city centers in order to harvest the excess heat for district heating

The cost/benefit for doing this seems pretty similar between fusion as gas power. We don't usually do this with gas, so I guess it's probably not viable for fusion.

[nerdsniper]

Many cities/towns in the USA have small power plants in them (typically associated with a University, large hospital system, or central business district) which "sell" not just power, but also hot water, and steam. The steam is typically used to heat buildings. Google for "$CITY steam tunnels" or "$CITY CHP plant" to find these in your area.

San Francisco has[0][1][2][3] at least five combined heat and power plants that generate electricity and also sell steam to neighboring buildings via 72,000 feet of pipes.

I worked at a privately-owned for-profit "factory" in Santa Monica whose primary product was chilled water (their other product was warm water). They built pipelines to nearby large buildings and sold chilled water to them.

0: https://cordiaenergy.com/locations/san-francisco-3/ (2 for-profit CHP plants)

1: Skanska (for-profit)

2: San Francisco General Hospital

3: Apparently there are some "Muni" CHP plants scattered about SF as well (publicly-owned)

[markvdb]

Combined heat and electricity production is uncommon in the US, but much more so in Europe. Especially in the Baltics, Scandinavia and the Netherlands, non-CHP generation is rare. Related: higher energy cost, and elaborate local heat distribution networks.

[namibj]

Look at where the Barmen gas power plant is in Wuppertal, Germany to see....

[dheera]

> The cost/benefit for doing this seems pretty similar between fusion as gas power.

The real problem is stupid capitalism reprices everything good to the price of the non-good thing. Solar was supposed to be almost-free clean electricity, but the price of panels has been repriced to make them the same as dirty electricity.