A quote from the ITER web site...

"Up to now fusion research has been relatively cheap and at the cutting edge of science, so most governments have done it to have something non-defence-related to occupy and train the cadre of physicists and engineers they believe it is necessary to have for strategic reasons. Its been another area like high energy physics and space science. Harmless but with plenty of high tech spinoff. Now however in fusion we are past the point of scientific demonstration and talking about engineering feasibility, which gets you to questions of environmental aceptability and economic viability."

Interesting stuff, hope it goes.