I apologize for over-generalizing. I realize it isn't replicating a star. The nifty thing about being a star is that you have this massive gravitational force

I apologize for over-generalizing. I realize it isn't replicating a star. The nifty thing about being a star is that you have this massive gravitational force available as your containment. No matter how we do fusion, we'll likely need containment, and it's a vastly harder problem than "put enough fissile atoms close enough together to sustain a chain reaction." Let's face it - the big reason that fission reactors are dangerous is that stopping a reaction is as difficult or often more difficult than starting it.