Fusion carries with it it's own risks, even theoretically. And, politically, it's far too often confused with fission, the big bad "nuclear".
The first expansion of clean nuclear in decades just recently (on the scale of those projects as of the past few decades) got approved here in GA to add a new reactor to Votgle. There's a lot of shared knowledge between that plant and the DoD operation at Savannah River Site, and I think that may have had something to do with it.
The scratch of the Yucca project due to various reasons (much of which had to do with the safety of transporting waste across state lines) really has put a dampner on US nuclear development.
And, while Fusion is largely a different beast, it is still associated with Fission in the mind of the mass consumer.
Solar and Wind distributed grids hold a lot of promise, but also a lot of investment and upkeep for nominal relative output. They work in some geographies (for example, wind is a massive part of the TX energy grid, which makes sense, they have lots of flatlands to make it work)...
Hydro and coastal are my two personal favorites, for the exact reasons you described. They are the most predictable, when it comes to converting natural kinetic energy to electrical. But, due to other political pressures, they have fallen out of favor.
Sadly (or rather I should say accurately) natural gas and coal (or "clean coal" as they now call it, though that just refers to anthracite, which they've burned for decades because it's high BTU yield, low waste, not because it's "cleaner"...per se...) are the cheapest we have to keep the grid flowing.
And, that's what it's about. Flow.
