I would say there have been a handful of important milestones this year, but this I would consider a breakthrough. Most of the other stuff is overhyped for sure.
"Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology’s potential is hard to ignore. Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years."
Not sure if you were expecting things to progress faster. But it it "only" takes 20 years. That would be insanely fast and world changing.
It's important to note that while this is technically true, it's mostly irrelevant. Sure, there's no material that will remain radioactive for the next 10k years, but instead you get much more highly radioactive material that will emit high doses for a "short" hundred years or so.
It's worth noting that the last 2 generations of fission plants were guaranteed to produce no waste, to be cheap, efficient, reliable etc. The unpalatable truth here is that we have no idea what fusion power will look like until we have built a few. The quoted section made me laugh as it's easy to be zero carbon when you don't actually exist... :)
The potential is hard to ignore, but that doesn't mean the potential will ever be achieved. This (like crypto currency) is the realm of vapourware I am afraid. Always just around the corner. :(
What's sort of my point: we've had big projects that would totally definitely work this time every few years since the 90s. Will ITER work? Maybe. Would it be the first to fail (or even the 10th) if it doesn't? No. Per your own link there are literally 100s of other "reactors".
