Yeah, either heavy-ion beams or electrically-pumped excimer lasers seems like the path forward for the driver. Higher efficiency, higher repetition rate, possibly more robust. They also need to do away with holraums and switch to direct drive, to reduce target cost, ease alignment issues, and increase energy efficiency.
I don't hold out much hope for a practical, economical reactor from inertial confinement, but it's certainly exciting to see them achieve ignition & scientific breakeven, even if it's 10 years behind schedule. The one nice thing about ICF is that the energy gain shoots up dramatically once you cross the ignition threshold. That means they're arguably closer than tokamaks, even though both concepts need ~100x the demonstrated gain to get from where they are now to a workable reactor. (Ie, tokamaks have hit Q~0.3, need to get Q~30, vs ICF that has hit Q~1, needs Q~100).
I don't hold out much hope for a practical, economical reactor from inertial confinement, but it's certainly exciting to see them achieve ignition & scientific breakeven, even if it's 10 years behind schedule. The one nice thing about ICF is that the energy gain shoots up dramatically once you cross the ignition threshold. That means they're arguably closer than tokamaks, even though both concepts need ~100x the demonstrated gain to get from where they are now to a workable reactor. (Ie, tokamaks have hit Q~0.3, need to get Q~30, vs ICF that has hit Q~1, needs Q~100).