It seems we got similar headlines out of the NIF in 2013. Those claims neglected the energy absorbed by the pellet walls (I think). In the past 8 years, apparently, they've built a more transparent pellet and lenses that reduce these losses 99%, two orders of magnitude. So 8 years and a few billion per year gives a 2 order of magnitude reduction in one obstacle.

But the process of charging the laser capacitors is still inefficient, and those losses also have to be reduced by at least two orders of magnitude before commercialization.

And it's not clear if any of the exotic tricks they used to make the pellet could ever be mass produced or what the energy input of that process might be.

Meanwhile, the ITER and W7-x experiments are using very different physics to make plasma, and none of the stuff at NIF is likely to help their efforts.

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