Fusion, especially the mainstream approaches, does not appear capable of getting to a competitive energy source, even if it somehow (physically) "works". It's very bad from an engineering point of view, with showstoppers of materials, power density, complexity, maintainability, and reliability.

Daniel J. Boorstin described a celebrity as a person who is "well known for their well known-ness". Fusion is a technology that is similarly recursive: it's being investigated because it was being investigated, not because it's worth doing when examined freshly. Whatever rationale for pushing DT fusion that once existed has largely evaporated.

If fusion survives at all, it has to be as a lower key modest pure research effort into long shot ideas that might evade the showstoppers. And new blood should be kept out of the field until it's shrunk enough. Anyone going into fusion these days is being poorly advised.