Since they chose the wording “can” vs. “did”, you can bet it was a single shot deal.
Plus, it pretty much had to be a single shot deal at the power density they were operating at. Nothing I know of can withstand temperatures that would be reached for very long at all.
There is an exception to this, of course. Magnetic bottles that do not allow a generated plasma to touch the containment vessel, will not melt at those temperatures.
But that is a hot fusion technology, not a cold one, nor this junk science in this article, which is not nuclear at all.
And I am very aware of the charade that is hot fusion. Anything that has been around that long becomes a institution, not a research project, IMO. Like Global Warming, it becomes a grant generating machine. Just one more problem, and then the next, and the next...
We only know of two places true fusion occurs (larger output energy than input energy to initiate reaction): stars and nuclear weapons. Stars use big dumb mass to generate gravity (or distort space) and fuse the elements within. Nuclear weapons use inertial confinement.
I suspect man’s first foray into true fusion power will be inertial confinement systems. We need to shrink the systems required to initiate the reactions, and perfect the target designs, and then finally master energy extraction from the reactor system.
you can bet it was a single shot deal.
***Then watch the demo and see for yourself. The rest of what you’re saying are faith statements.