Possible. Another option is fission technology. More downsides than fusion but it's ready right now.
As you might or might not know, fission technology would be vastly inferior to fusion technology not only in terms of downsides, but also in terms of power output. The principal downside of fusion is, as you note, that it's not here, and might never be.
I have a hard time getting excited about nuclear power. It's possibly because conservatives have been abusing nuclear power for a generation in bad faith, using it as an excuse to do nothing at all about the climate. "Oh, we would support decarbonization, but we have do it with nuclear" as if it's an either-or. The point for conservatives has always been to attempt to position themselves in the adults in the room instead of sand-blinded ostriches they actually were (and are).
Way before trolling was a thing, way before it was a named and familiar means of antisocial human interaction, nuclear power was the ultimate troll job. White men in suits would go on TV or write articles in newspapers about how nuclear was absolutely necessary for our economy and it was nuclear or nothing. They knew very well it would be nothing, because liberals and the general public were scared of nuclear power -- especially after Chernobyl. Especially after the problems communities and the nation faced with radioactive, decommissioned nuclear plants and nuclear waste. So every one of those Bush administration mfers who would say, "we need to replace oil with nuclear" while never lifting a finger to actually make nuclear a reality -- they were all trolls. They were gaslighters. They weren't interested in anything other than pumping oil, and saw nuclear as a way of fracturing (hah, hah) the environmental movement and discrediting that movement in the eyes of the public.
This isn't to say anything pro or con the technology itself. I'm just saying that the political meaning of nuclear power has, for most of my adult life, been an excuse to do nothing about climate. The conservatives held nuclear up as the perfect and consciously used it as the enemy of the good, so they could look less unreasonable than wild-eyed cranks who said that climate change was actually about sun spots. The political meaning of nuclear power has always been, "conservative white men who actively shill for the fossil fuel status quo are well-educated and dispassionate analysts, where as liberals are just clueless hippies."
IOW, for most of my adult life, nuclear has been a con job, a trap to catch people with a less sensitive BS meter than mine (or millions of others like me). I am not interested in falling into the trap again.
I am eager to make common cause with nuclear power activists -- but it has to be common cause. That's not always how the other side sees it. On the other board, there was a poseur energy-expert who had weird philosophical objections to solar and wind power, saying they weren't even energy sources and a whole bunch of other crap. But, he said, he supports nuclear, and so should I. No way. I'll get on board with nuclear only if the nuclear folks get on board with solar and wind and a new grid and all the things we need to do cut our emissions as rapidly as possible, before more of our oceans become hot tubs, before the Amazon rain forest dies, before the Greenland ocean current reverses, before substantial parts of the US become uninhabitable because of heat (to say nothing of areas closer to the equator).
If you are for nuclear but not those things, then you remain an enemy of the human race and there will be no common cause with me. I will use you transactionally, just as you've been using environmentalists transactionally for two generations.
