Does fooling around with Tokamaks and stellarators count as scientific research?
Certainly, containing fusing plasma magnetically requires developing a much better understanding than we now have of plasma fluid dynamics under conditions of high pressure and complicated, variable magnetic field geometry, but studying plasma fluid dynamics for itself does not need multi-billion dollar equipment. Nobody wants to give plasma physicists a dime just to learn about plasma, even though it would be fantastically cheaper than what is being done instead.
