And the link to full article went nowhere- but I am pretty sure I see part of what they are doing...

Back in 1999 (I think) there was a paper demonstrating you can use an ultrashort intense laser pulse to very briefly drive an immense current pulse- if you arrange it so that this current pulse is driven through a tiny conducting loop you can very briefly create an incredibly intense magnetic field in a very small region.

It looks like this is part of the process they use from the diagram... Its clever, and I certainly have no idea how well it would work- the whole assembly will be vaporized in the process.

By doing this you can create a FAR more powerful magnetic field in the fusion pellet than would be otherwise possible...perhaps? enough to confine the plasma tightly enough to give a good fusion yield.

If it really works it would be big. I was once given a tour of the National Ignition Facility in Livermore (before they achieved fusion), and was told that when they first had successful fusion the conference room I was in would need to be evacuated due to the anticipated neutron flux. They had people working there looking at what materials to use in the facility around the massive chamber to minimize the halflife of the secondary radioactive isotopes created by the neutrons.

If humanity has any hope of making it we need to figure out a carbon-free energy source immediately... it may already be too late. There really needs to be an international collaboration that dwarfs the Apollo program to not just discover how to do fusion, but how to make it the primary source of energy worldwide ASAP.