Both can be true at the same time. None of us should _count_ on nuclear fusion being available as an energy source until at least the very first critical demo reactor _that actually generates useful electrical energy_, and we as a society need to move on as if it wasn't happening.

That being said, my mind was stuck in Animat's state as well for a long time, mainly because of neutron flux. Neutrons were the ultimate end boss at the end of the goal by laughing at your fusion progress and just destroying every containment that comes their way. What excites me these days are modern contenders like HB11 Energy and Helion Fusion jumping directly to aneutronic fusion.

This is the stuff most physicists didn't dare to dream of as of late, mostly because they weren't even close to sustaining the simplest D-T reactions for long, and aneutronic fusion takes even considerately hotter and denser plasmas — as well as being plagued by fuel availability concerns (HE3). But it's something that's within reach due to massive advances in ultra-short laser technology, coil breakthroughs and some other clever hacks like breeding HE3 on site.

That, combined with the other advance of direct electrical harvest instead of thermic conversion puts fusion into territories of believable reach for the first time in my mind. After decades of disappointedly following the status quo, I'm getting seriously excited.