LANL is working on low cost, IEC fusion power reactors. This is Inertial Electrostatic Confinement-based system, otherwise known as the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor, invented by Philo Farnsworth, who also invented television, back in the day.
Robert Bussard, Eric Lerner’s Focus Fusion, and others have also been working on inexpensive means of fusion. These are important, because unlike the hugely expensive ITER, these types of reactors are small and affordable by cities or companies. Reactors at ITER’s scale require funding from multiple nation-states.
The inexpensive fusion technologies really could usher in a whole new world – with cheap electric power, we can cure many of the world’s problems that are related to scarcity*: water shortages, food shortages, poverty caused by lack of clean industrial development. It means fast and inexpensive space travel, too – possibly enabling us to survive world-size disasters like asteroid impacts.
I’m hopeful that more resources being put into this kind of power generation will yield results faster than ITER, which has been slow and expensive.
* Yes, if we can also stop fighting so much. I’m hopeful that when cheap fusion power is prevalent we will at least stop fighting wars over resources.