> fusion merely has a funding problem.

When you look at history of ITER failures and the real problems involved in making the whole fusion power production operation economically sustainable, this claim disintegrates. It is a very complex project that is hard to manage, and building and operating fusion power plant is currently much more costly than doing that for a fission power plant. The only benefit of fusion vs. fission is that fusion can give us much more energy. But fission can give enough energy now for decades, and much more cheaply.