ITER is a considerably more complex research device, designed and developed to generate and study burning plasma. It is also the first device of it's kind inten

ITER is a considerably more complex research device, designed and developed to generate and study burning plasma. It is also the first device of it's kind intended to do this. It is an entirely uncontroversial issue that the first version of literally anything is comparatively expensive compared to the costs of subsequent ones. This is a problem the US Navy is intimately familiar with when it comes to shipbuilding as it is currently experiencing with it's next generation aircraft carrier design. It is incredible though to see people saying that the ITER design is "obsolete" when the actual proposed replacement technologies have ongoing papers trying to move towards practical deployment as recently literally this year. EDIT: It is worth nothing that I could be wrong in the end if the SPARC project succeeds[1], but there's a pretty heavy asterisk on that since ITER is amongst other things, a research project - the plasma physics modelling, supporting fusion research, even manufacturing and magnet winding research and other miscellaneous construction processes are all public knowledge which is shared amongst participating nations. It's been the only game in town for decades, and no one was wrong to try and build a fusion reactor 3 decades ago when it was as desperately needed then as it is even more so now. [1] https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc