A USU physicist says Project Beehive's full build-out would release about 26 GW of heat; no thermal analysis of the site has been published

Robert Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University, told KSL (7 October 2026) that Project Beehive's 9.6 GW of electricity at full build-out, from reactors about 40% efficient, would mean about 26 GW of heat released over some 9,000 acres north of Wellington, 'a thermal load that's eight times the entire state of Utah's current electrical demand on this one project', and: 'I've seen no evidence of any kind of thermal analysis.' He also said the technology 'has not been demonstrated at all on this scale' and raised questions about its supply chains; to Grist he said, 'If you're in a contained valley, it concentrates the problem.' Our check of the figures: 9.6 GW of electricity at 40% efficiency is 24 GW of heat (26 GW implies about 37%; at 45% it would be 21 GW), and because the data centers' electricity also ends as heat on site, the total heat released locally is about 21 to 26 GW. EIA's 2024 figures put Utah's retail electricity sales at 34,688,083 megawatt-hours, an average demand of 3.95 GW, so that heat is about 5 to 7 times Utah's average electrical demand rather than eight (eight times would mean a demand of 3.25 GW). The scale also raises a question about the reactors: the American Nuclear Society noted that 9.6 GW across 456 reactors means at least 21 MW of electricity each, 'significantly higher than any capacity previously ascribed to the design'. No thermal or local-climate analysis of the site was found in the record as of 12 October 2026.

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