Looking at the fact there are currently no active electricity generating fusion power plants, and we do not know which technology will "win", how likely is this a waste of money ? Or am I missing a point ?
And as tritium has a relatively short half life, it makes sense to research ways to generate, recycle and store it.
There's no reason to wait for a self-sustaining reactor to be online before you start to research other technologies that would be needed for a commercially viable setup. There's no obvious reason why this shouldn't be done in parallel.
The value of the basic research aside, it strikes me that it's as least as valuable as any current fusion research.