[perl4ever]

Does it work better at scale? The sun definitely produces a lot of energy in total. However, "the Sun's "power density" is "approximately 276.5 W/m3, a value that more nearly approximates that of reptile metabolism or a compost pile than of a thermonuclear bomb".

If, overlooking the details, we were able to build a cubic meter sized "fusion box" that outputs 276W, then it would take about 2 million of them to produce a reasonable output for a power plant of 600MW. And it would take up about half the volume of NASA's vehicle assembly building, ignoring any support structure needed. That's not unimaginably huge, but it's pretty large compared to other types of power plants, I would think.

So assuming we solve all the technical problems to capturing the power source of the stars using handwavium or perhaps generously donated alien widgets, I wonder if it might still be uneconomic.