Fusion Breakthrough Hits Hurdles as Five Experiments Fail

The one-off result and announcement from December 2022 seems to be linked to the funding cycle for NIF at LLNL. For example:

That’s why I’m also proud to announce today that I’ve helped to secure the highest-ever authorization of over $624 million this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for the ICF program to build on this amazing breakthrough.

https://www.llnl.gov/news/lawrence-livermore-national-labora...

NIF was designed to simulate nuclear weapons, and only switched to fusion power R&D to win continued funding when the military sponsors shifted towards supercomputer simulations.

In fact, the energy from that 2022 test was not breakeven - it was only ~1% of the total energy input.

Inertial confinement does not seem to be a promising route to commercial fusion.

> without being able to replicate the results

Not really failure to replicate if the conditions are different.