I would like to push back on the "waste" production of nuclear fission. Much of that "waste" contains useful, fissile material that could be used in breeder reactors for even more power and lower half life "waste" further down the chain. We don't do this in America because we mostly care about the military benefits of nuclear fission production and eschewed research funding for breeder reactors. China and Russia are much better in this regard and have a handful of functional breeders. It's mostly the politics that makes nuclear power unsafe.

Here's a thing about potential: you can only be certain of it after you've solved these "engineering challenges". Does tritium breeding factor, EROEI and material footprint (all mined, transported and processed using fossil fuels) mean a thing to you? These factors are not specific to fusion, but they're the most challenging for fusion reactors of currently known designs.