[vy_MR2]

Being that I work at a nuclear plant as a Plant Operator, I will throw some input into this. The aboved mentioned universites do have experiements at their campuses, but for obvious reasons, do not accurately represent a true reactor, but there are a lot of good things there. However, it is a great way to learn before going into the industry.
As far as fusion, it is meant to be the next cheap electricity. Basically, if you can take 2 hydrogen atoms to collide at neutron speeds (before thermalization), they will bond to produce helium, and give off neutrons, radiation, and energy. Now, for better results, it is thought that using deuterium will be better than hydrogen, but the current market value for a 200 gallon drum of deuterium is around $70,000 Canadian.
Fission, is taking a heavy atom, we'll use uranium 235 as it is naturally occuring and used in all CANDU reactors. The atrom is bombarded witha neutron, turning into U-236 (very unstable) the atom breaks apart into two smaller atoms, 3 neutrons, gamma, beta, alpha, and a huge amount of energy. These neutrons move on to the next U-235 atoms and do the same thing. So you can see that we started with 1 reaction, then 3, 9, 81 etc....