The author's assertion that this project will be impacted
by the Japanese disaster shows that she doesn't understand
the technology.
The first team to reach net power out (and there are many teams around the world working on different paths to this at the moment) will have no trouble explaining it to people in a way that will differentiate it from dirty nuclear power. Getting to net power out will be, by far, the more challenging part.
The NIF's plan for a commercial inertial confinement fusion reactor looks like the NIF, except that shots occur ten times a second. At the moment they have no way of firing the lasers that often, or of extracting all the energy thus produced.
Just because there isn't net power out today doesn't mean that an enormous amount of progress hasn't been made.
Germany did shut down the more problematic reactors for a security check. The question is whether the reactors survive a scenario, where multiple systems are failing (like in Japan). This can be caused by operator errors, terrorist attacks, earth quakes (yes, germany has earth quakes), etc.
Compare that with the US, which has several reactors which are much more dangerous than most German ones, has some in very dangerous earth quake zones, etc. The US did mostly nothing.
I know which government I prefer.
* The US government did nothing because they've already considered and inspected for these contingencies, knowing that the reactors are in earthquake zones.
* The German government is displaying their incompetence because it took a huge disaster somewhere else for them to decide to look at these issues, rather than being more proactive about it.
You're assuming that because the US did nothing that it's reactors are vulnerable and the government must be turning a blind eye to it. You've provided no evidence to back this claim.
The accident in Japan provided knew knowledge: it showed multiple scenarios which were thought to be extremely unlikely or which were not thought about at all.
Fusion reactors spew neutrons which can create a variety of radioactive isotopes. Most of these are very short-lived, fortunately -- but they do exist, and reactor designs need to take these into account.
(Also, some reactor designs use tritium as fuel, which is of course radioactive to begin with.)
Side note: the National Ignition Facility is freaking awesome.
C-14 is not much contained in old fossil fuels due to radioactive decay. The literature also discusses the Suess effect, which shows that coal power plant reduced the effect of C-14.
Also of course, several projects are attempting boron fusion, which doesn't produce neutrons other than from a small portion of side reactions.
You're right that the fission products and high-mass-number alpha emitters have left the picture, though.
The collective opinion of Joe is what constitutes public opinion, and public opinion is (as I understand it) one of the biggest obstacles.
/facepalm