The best information available says fusion as pursued will never be anywhere close to competitive even with fission (which is not today economically competitive

The best information available says fusion as pursued will never be anywhere close to competitive even with fission (which is not today economically competitive), never mind with photovoltaic solar panels (which are). Fusion research is cool beans, but not for any plausible practical reason. Given that, all the work on making it happen at big scale is a wholly wasted. The companies issued billion-dollar contracts to build parts of it do not see those contracts as wasteful, and hope we won't.