It's also worth pointing out that this isn't doing any nuclear fusion; it's a test bed to verify the stellarator's particle confinement and efficiency at heatin

It's also worth pointing out that this isn't doing any nuclear fusion; it's a test bed to verify the stellarator's particle confinement and efficiency at heating plasma [1]. Achieving these objectives does not require producing an energy-yielding fusion plasma. This is because the properties of an ignited plasma can largely be transferred by the ITER tokamak to stellarators. Wendelstein 7-X can therefore dispense with the use of the radioactive fusion fuel, tritium, thereby greatly reducing costs. This is why it's so much cheaper than ITER to build; they're building a part of a nuclear fusion reactor. [1] http://www.ipp.mpg.de/w7x http://www.ipp.mpg.de/w7x