Well, they got more out of the fuel than the laser delivered, so that’s nice. But I’m sure they didn’t ‘break even’ when taking into account:
-powering the lasers
-powering the confinement scheme
-running the vacuum pumps
-refining the fuel
-cooling everything
etc etc
That’s the thing about these fusion “break even” reports: it’s largely a matter of zooming in to the fine scale. It’s kind of like saying your running back “advanced the ball!”, but then you realize he moved it half a yard out to the one yard line, and the end zone is still 99 yards away.
Still, it’s progress.
“-powering the lasers”
Just one stage of the laser amplifier is less than 50% efficient. I would not be surprised that the input might be 10x the delivered energy.
“powering the confinement scheme”
Zero. Inertial confinement.
I don’t know the future holds be it just may be far cheaper to burn dollars to keep warm then anything these yokels are coming up with...