There is no functioning fusion plant and there won't be for at least another 40 years. Whether waste is an issue for fusion, I don't know. There's going to be some waste, but I thought it was supposed to be less than for fission. We'll see.

I do see that we're already getting huge cost overruns on the ITER project, which is logical. The parties can probably only get the funding through by gradually raising the estimated costs. I predict that it will end up costing five to six times more than the 16 billion dollars currently estimated.

In the mean while, there's an old story from the Guardian which already brought this news. It also has some of teh funny:

The flagship project, which absorbs almost half of Britain's energy research budget, will test complex machinery needed to make the world's first operational fusion power plants - a technology widely expected to transform energy generation by providing abundant power with no greenhouse gas emissions and only small amounts of radioactive waste.

The Iter fusion reactor was originally costed at €10bn (£9bn), but the rising price of raw materials and changes to the initial design are likely to see that bill soar, officials confirmed today.

The warning came as scientists gathered in Finland to unveil the first component of the reactor, which will effectively act as its exhaust pipe. The reactor is expected to take nearly 10 years to build and is scheduled to be switched on in 2018.

It began as a US-Russian project in the 1980s, but has since grown to include the EU, China, India, Japan and South Korea.

Britain currently pays around £20m into Iter each year.