FTA: Comparing tokamak reactors to inertial fusion, Hawker added that "magnetic fusion is like a furnace. It's an always-on hot process because the particles are going around the donut. Whereas inertial fusion is more like an internal combustion engine. It's a pulsed process where you have a repetition rate and the energy per event multiplied by the frequency gives you the power."

Let’s give them that they will be able to get more energy out of a single shot than they put in.

Even then, how many shots do they plan to do per second, and how long will their setup last? The barrel of a hand fire-arm lasts for a few thousand shots or, expressed differently, a few seconds of use (https://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/facts-abo...). Do larger guns fare better?