Yes, but why just ITER? Can we really wait until 2035 at which point it's still just a PoC before working on DEMO, and how many DEMOs can we build quickly after

Yes, but why just ITER? Can we really wait until 2035 at which point it's still just a PoC before working on DEMO, and how many DEMOs can we build quickly after that? There is promising work coming out of Lockheed's Skunk Works, using a completely different design and MIT has SPARC. Given ITER is pretty well locked in on the Tokamak design they've chosen and it a matter of building it, why not fund as many ideas as possible as while most may not work, you just don't know whether one results in a discovery and pivot that changes everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion_Reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion... https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc