This article does not mention some important context. I don't know all the ins and outs, but it's important to understand that the big US experiment in nuclear

This article does not mention some important context. I don't know all the ins and outs, but it's important to understand that the big US experiment in nuclear fusion was NIF, at LLNL. They (perhaps rashly) promised net energy gain by the end of this fiscal year. This whole thing was part of an elaborate political deal regarding maintaining nuclear expertise during the test ban treaty. Anyway, net gain did not happen; the ratio of energy out to energy in at the NIF is 0.1. This had been expected for many months now (indeed, it was predicted by some as soon as the deal was cut, years ago.) At this point, the pie of nuclear research dollars is going to be re-cut with different allocations. For one thing, the fusion/non-fusion balance at NIF is going to tilt away from fusion. So, in the absence of a NIF fusion success story, this press release could be part of a campaign by other labs or other experiments to press their own research agenda for fusion. For partial background: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/science/fusion-project-faces-a-frugal-congress.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/science/fusion-project-fac...