Looking at the picture, I wonder if complexity of these devices will significantly be reduced once it finally works. I assume a lot of the bells and whistles are needed to find the way, but once it's found..
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Yeah, a single welded tube of the right diameter that necks down just so in that one spot to prevent cavitation, which has that sweeping multi-planar bend to just barely sneak through that obstruction, will look neat and tidy to a casual observer. Conversely, a stack of triclamp flanges, a straight length of pipe that shoots way out away from the guts of the equipment before it jogs sideways and down and back in with 90 degree couplings and gaskets and a manual shut-off valve and a pressure transmitter/flow meter and a "T" with a cap (just in case) and a sight glass looks like an awful mess.
But I can build the latter in half an hour with parts we have on hand. And I'm not even a fitter, I'm an engineer! And when you do want to add something to it, I can do that in 5 minutes. After observing it function through the full regime of pressure and flow and viscosity parameters the equipment might have to deal with, I can maybe generate a print for the real plumbers to build the former dedicated-purpose component that sets all the constraints in stone (or rather, in welded stainless). That part will be unique and inflexible, embedding all the restrictions and history and test results and design decisions into a component that looks deceptively smooth to a layman's eyes.
Is that simpler? I suppose it depends on your perspective.
Yes and no. I think you are right that the plasma shape is going to remain very complex.
But that's not the only reason why W7-X looks complicated. It has a ton of diagnostics ports on the plasma vessel just for research. Most of those we can probably design out for a production version.
So I would expect a production version of a stelarator to be simpler than W7-X, but still remain very complex.