Re: Q>1
I was with you until you started talking about waste heat, because in power generation, heat is the thing you are after, and it is only "waste heat" once you have extracted useful work from it (e.g. via a turbine) and the remaining temperature difference is too low to get any more meaningful use out of it (there's a reason the laws of thermodynamics are called the laws of thermodynamics, and it's tied up with the industrial revolution and the drive to make steam engines efficient).
So-called "waste heat" from power generation is something you get from any generation method, and it's not the problem we have from coal. Coal has a number of very significant issues from the simple greenhouse emissions, to production of sulphur dioxide and toxic ash, and also radioactive fallout (what, you thought coal was pure carbon? How sweet).
If a method of power generation is "clean" and safe enough, there's no reason why it can't be interspersed with other buildings, where that heat can be put to good use as district heating in commercial and residential properties.
In other words, if we're worrying about what to do with the waste heat, we've probably already cracked the problem of getting enough of it to generate power.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
