It's hard not to come away from reading any of this without thinking what a huge boondoggle ITER was and is and there was plenty of reason to think that before now.
A lot of talk here is given to net energy production. That is a key milestone but it's not by itself sufficient for commercial fusion power production.
Example: imagine a plant costs $10B and products 100MW of net power. It has a lifespan of 30 years and requires $500m/year in maintenance and staffing. That capital cost and operating costs need to be amortized over the lifespan of the plant so even though it's 100MW of net power production, those numbers simply aren't commercially viable.
I applaud these efforts but I remain skeptical on when (if ever) we'll have commercial fusion power production, for several reasons:
1. The issues of turbulence with a super-heated plasma;
2. Power loss through neutrons; and
3. Damage caused by neutron embrittlement of the reactor itself.
Personally I think solar is still the frontrunner for the first renewable mass-scale power production method that will be cheaper than fossil fuels and thus replace fossil fuel plants for economic reasons.
I'm glad there are a bunch of commercial enterprises focused on this. I hope at least some of them explore some of the alternative forms of fusion (ie other than hydrogen). For example: proton-Born fusion [2]. Aneutronic fusion would have huge advantages.
[1]: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a37924936/wo...