...as much as I want the late Robert Bussard's efforts to pay-off, no alternative fusion system is as fusion-ready as tokamaks. They're big, they're ugly, they spit god-awful neutrons, but they're also as close to "controlled fusion" as any system has yet achieved. The time-lag is due more to politics and less to physics than it might seem. Likewise the gigantic laser-ignition systems which are, transparently, a substitute for fusion-bomb tests and not primarily experimental power-machines.

Colliding-beam, plasma-focus, whiffle-ball, z-pinch and all the other fusion wannabes go against the grain of 50 years of plasma-physics orthodoxy, thus why they're seen - rightly or wrongly - as long shots. But with $x-billions going into ITER surely a billion directed their way wouldn't go astray.