Nice to know that one can still get big resistors for those really big projects. That reminds me of the time back in technical school when we were counselled by the department head on which specialization (or major) we should take after completing our first year. He was addressing the entire class in support of choosing power engineering (ie. dams, generating stations, high voltage transmission lines, really big resistors etc.) over Control Electronics (as computer engineering was called then) and Telecommunications Engineering. His favorite argument was "why would you want to play with microamps and microvolts when you can play with kiloamps and kilovolts?". In the light of subsequent events, the answer is quite clear, but back then the microcomputer was just being invented and the personal computer was still many years away. Not to mention that I grew up in a region with a lot of talent and engineering firms specializing in hydro-electric generation. So the argument about Kilovolts was not entirely lost on us poor students.
The irony of it all is that the field of power engineering may well re-emerge now that there is a new focus on energy resources.