Let France pour money down a hole for 40 years if it wants.
At least the atom bomb (fusion/fission) and the fission reactor were children of a theory which actually worked out on paper before any construction began. And whaddya know, they went boom exactly as predicted. If someone could engineer credibly on paper a fusion design which would actually generate more power than it eats, then I would say let's go ahead and spend up to half the kingdom to build the darn thing. I get a sinking feeling that they aren't really finding out anything new about the physics of the process and they could already tell that what they are trying won't work.
The experiments, or 'shots' should continue as substantial progress has been made in generating increasingly larger terawatt outputs utilizing the z-pinch approach.
Progress has been slow but results have been positive. http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/ZP/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Pinch
Speaking of money holes, what's IRaq at now, gotta be over $200 B's down that mideast rathole by now (I know, I know, sacred cow...).
The amount of energy independence that amount could buy is staggering.
"Let France pour money down a hole for 40 years"
If I'm not mistaken, the "US" has agreed to generously support this project for france. How smart is that?