It's an article about how fusion is still far away.

It's technically cool, yes, but we need electricity now, and tomorrow, not next century.

I'm excited for fusion as a human accomplishment, as high tech research, maybe as a power source for future spaceships.

But I think it's likely the time may never come when it's used to generate power for the electric grid, and expecting that to come soon is just naive. We don't even have a single fusion plant that produces power yet, let alone the hundreds of them that would be needed for the tech to have a real-world impact.

It is an article that nicely illustrates that it is at least 50 years away. We shouldn't pin any hopes to it or (for me at least) fund research on it any more than 10% of the funding we provide for solar research.

The title says 'fusion' but the talk is actually about NIF and their inflated PR.

Fusion energy companies like CFS (tokamak) or Helion (colliding FRCs with direct energy capture) might start producing electricity to the grid in less than 10 years.

Once they have a working prototype it is going to be 10 to 15 years for paperwork and building the first plant.

They are competing for the same market. Unless fusion can be much more economical than solar?

Renewables are one of the reasons fusion (particularly DT fusion) is unlikely to succeed economically. Of course it never fails; it a centrally important part of discussing fusion.