If I remember my final year Gymnasium paper correctly, we've come full circle again. The concepts for stellarators and tokamaks were invented at about the same

If I remember my final year Gymnasium paper correctly, we've come full circle again. The concepts for stellarators and tokamaks were invented at about the same time. Although one in the west and the other in the east. At first, stellarators were all the rage in the west but then were replaced mostly by tokamaks. Historically, tokamaks proved to be more popular because they had simpler geometry and produced hotter plasma because of providing a better confinement. Now, with the advantages of computer simulation, designing a stellarator isn't as hard as it used to be. That's really exciting. But that's how science works. Even if tokamaks might end up being a dead end after all, there was scientific knowledge and practical experience being gained by studying and running them which also is useful for stellarator researchers. OTOH ITER might be an expensive dead end, but ITER is also a political project and as we all know, those often go awry.