Yeah it's taking a long time. Looks like South Korea is going to take the next step.
http://www.nature.com/news/south-korea-makes-billion-dollar-bet-on-fusion-power-1.12251
They hope to start delivering 1 giga watt of fusion generated power to the net in the 2030's

This happens/has happened in pretty much every country. The sole reason for this is to make politicians look good on tv: "Hey look, we are green politicians - we care for the environment.. blablabla". The economy behind this overpaying small producers is unsane, catastrophic and dumb, and puts a heavy bill on all those customers who ultimately have to pay for this "generosity" (somebody has to pay for this "green" energy in the end - and it is NOT the electricity companies). In Germany, for example, prices are going through the roof and more and more people are gettimg into trouble paying their electricity bills .

That doesn't mean Wind is good though, nor my points wrong.

It just means France did not keep up with their growing power demands and Germany did. And as I said previously, Germany would have seen greater returns if it had invested in Nuclear, not wind.

The oil and gas industry isnt really the same thing as biodiesel, it's a synthetic.  Also, yes there are emissions, but all of the C02 will beef the plants up, make them hardier and get them to produce more oxygen. Circle of life.

I really had big hopes in fusion energy 10 years ago. That has pretty much crashed, as I got confronted with the reality. 1 GW at 2030 would be a good achievement for fusion power, but to set it into relation: at the moment sourh korea builds an offshore-windpark that is planned to produce 2.5 GW of energy: http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/south-korea-off-shore-wind-farm/

You've heard about the ITER project, right?

Btw, the progress in fusion isn't really measured by the amount of GW produced, but rather how efficient the process is,  energy out divided by energy in. 

As far as I know, the JET project has produced around 70% of energy put in, but the ITER project aims to make 10 times the amount of energy of what was put in but that will be in 2030...

Well, it is not that France didn't try. They develop the next generation of nuclear power - the EPR.

They build one in France and one in Finland:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant

The construction has been delayed by years and the costs in both  cases already more than doubled. That sounds like a real sane investment. That's what you recommend germany?

LOL. I cutted the quite tree for my mention of ITER. That is planned for a time-frame to 2038 (and it is not commercial, it is only a research project) and that has develop into a major moneysink. Yes, fusion power would be cool, but don't expect it to be mature before 2050. We need solutions now.

A project costing 8.3 billion to place 500 wind turbines in a hard to reach place where the elements are harshest on the materials involved.
1 billion for an experiment doesn't seem so bad then.
My hopes are for a future with unlimited cheap energy where electricity can be used to replace fossil fuels. Wind energy is not going to be able to provide that. In the mean time at least wind energy is better then building more coal fired plants.
2.5 GW is about 4 average sized coal fired plants. It costs about 5 billion less to build 2.5GW from coal, it will be a while before wind turbines make up the difference.

Well that is only one type of Gen 3+ reactors. Why did they not opt to build other variants, new or old? The fact that a prototype reactor went over budget is anything but surprising and not exactly reason to dismiss all Nuclear Reactors.