Fission the real path forward?
Whenever I see one of these fusion articles, I can't help thinking that advanced fission nuclear would be a much better bet.
Rod Adams (of Atomic Insights) has been promoting the idea of using fission heat to run a direct cycle gas turbine to produce electricity since the 90s. The key difference between this and current nuclear is that the gas passes through the reactor core then directly through a turbine, rather than using a heat exchanger as an intermediate step to heat a gas (steam) that then passes through a turbine.
Doing it with helium gas has proved impossible as you cannot go out and buy an off the shelf helium tubrine. But if heavy nitrogen (N15) was used instead, it could be used with the turbines currently used in gas fired power stations (with a closed cycle where the gas is collected on exit and cooled with sea or river water before being put back through the core).
This would cost decent money to develop, but doesn't seem to face the daunting challenges that fusion must overcome.
Some fusion heads seem hyper concerned about nuclear waste (probably because they don't want to think about fission and just want to get on with what they are interested in). But if you are worried about this you could nick Moltex Energy's idea of sticking molten salt fuel in fairly standard fuel pins, and stick them in this glass cooled reactor. Molten salt fuels enable simpler cheaper reprocessing of the fuel as no longer need to obtain ultra pure plutonium and uranium in order to make solid fuel cermaics or alloys. As a bonus molten slats are excellent at retaining fission products in any accident scenario.