Science Squabbling

As a power source for the foreseeable future, is this really much different to fission in practice ? Both could (if run properly without cutting corners) supply plenty of power without poisoning anyone, and both are fairly easy to fear-monger against. I think we'll see see more "OMG they might lose control of the reaction and melt the world, we need crippling safety restrictions" if fusion is ever enough of a near term threat to the profits of existing power station owners.

Well, there's an awful lot more accessible tritium around than uranium (millennia vs centuries), which is a plus for fusion, as well as the lack of nuclear weapons proliferation concerns. Of course, the thorium fuel cycle (also fission) is suggested to solve both those problems, but that is commercially unproven.

The side effects of losing control of a tokamak would be very bad for the tokamak - e.g. ITER will have a stored magnetic energy of 6.4 GJ == 1.5 tons of TNT or a large bomb going off - so the reactor would be utterly destroyed - but not much more than that. The reactor (ignoring fancy pants aneutronic fuel cycles) will be lightly radioactive (isotopes generally with half lives < 20 years) but we can reasonably plan to keep a power station site safe for a century unlike with fission's waste needing tens of thousands.