From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#cite_ref-power_production_...
The large power output of the Sun is mainly due to the huge size [...] Theoretical models of the Sun's interior indicate a maximum power density, or energy production, of approximately 276.5 watts per cubic metre at the center of the core,[77] which is about the same power density inside a compost pile
The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas https://g.co/kgs/g8rKyh
A follow up song, correcting the incorrect physics of the first one:
Why Does the Sun Really Shine? https://g.co/kgs/2QKBdw
So it seems to me the relevant measurement ought to be the ratio of energy per hydrogen atoms fused, not hydrogen atoms total. (Certainly in a reactor, where presumably all or most of them should be.)
We see this is large blue stars. They burn through their fuel supply in millions of years and years and explode with the force of a billion suns. Meanwhile small stars can burn for billions and billions of years because they are conservative with their hydrogen supply.
Not necessarily for humans. Stars get to be gravity-mass containment/fusion pressure automoderated, but there is nothing known even in blue sky to manipulate gravity beyond sheer mass. So humans have to deal with containing via electromagnetism and relatively little isolated surrounding matter, which means we have to deal with both ignition thresholds and the issue of neutrons. In stars neutrons provide heat/energy by sheer virtue of hitting stuff as they pass out from the core, and obviously radioactivity isn't a concern. But it's definitely an issue for a power plant, where neutrons mostly represent wasted energy since we don't have any good way to harness them for useful work, plus they'll activate surrounding materials over time which is also an irritation. So the ideal fusion may be aneutronic, which then faces tradeoffs of fuel availability vs ease of production.
For example terms of plain ease of engineering/compactness etc, helium-3 would probably be the best fuel. But helium 3 is also super ultra rare and effectively nonexistent naturally on Earth. We'd have to get it from space, or breed it from neutronic reactors which obviously isn't ideal (might be worth it as a compact fuel for far future spacecraft though). On the opposite side hydrogen-boron fusion requires much much higher ignition energy, greatly complicating actually building a working plant, but the fuels themselves are readily available. There are other potential ones between, or maybe we just suck it up and deal with neutron activation (still a lot less radioactivity than in fission plans), which could be moderated with more careful selection of construction materials.
At any rate, we're definitely not yet at the point where we can really say what the "best" fusion cycle will be, and it's perfectly possible we'll even end up with multiple (He3 for vehicle/more portable reactors, H-B or D-D for massive stationary ones say).
Proton – Boron-11: 1p + 11B → 3 4He + 8.7 MeV
This means it doesn't create radioactive waste or have the metal brittling problems that neutronic (H-H or H-D) fusion has.
Some groups [2][3] think the high temperatures can be achieved in small plasma bubbles without large amounts of magnetic confinement, making for small and inexpensive reactors.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion