Does this mean fusion power has been solved?One problem is that while the reactor’s output is higher than the laser’s output, the lasers themselves are very inefficient. To create 2.1 megajoules of energy, which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So a significant challenge for the future is to create a reaction that breaks even with its total energy requirements, and not just the final laser stage.
And, of course, even once a reactor can run for long periods and offset its true energy requirements by the lasers, it would still only be breaking even. For fusion to become a viable alternative to existing power sources, we must be able to extract a large amount of net energy – enough to make the enormous cost of building it worthwhile.While it is still impossible to tell for sure, as there could be insurmountable problems ahead, there is more cause for optimism than ever before.