jamesr wrote:
Being very much in the mainstream of fusion research, and the one who is requesting large sums of public money to fund the programs, I think there is a careful campaign by the CCFE to portray the tokamak approach, and the whole program leading onto ITER & DEMO as a low risk, inevitable and necessary project, that just needs time (&money;) to provide the worlds energy needs in 50-100 years time.

There is a resistant to anything, that distracts from this message.

This reminds me of one of the major barriers with fusion research. It’s possible that it’s impossible. Which makes it “illegitimate” and a probable drain on public funds. And in turn, this makes those working on it very cautious and risk averse, at a time when more creativity and diversity would, perhaps (but how can we be sure?) yield breakthroughs.