There seems to be some confusion in the comments. This is a science machine that does not aim to set any records. It’s more akin to DIII-D/ASDEX catchup and provide a decent platform for plasma physics.
That's mostly because the article linked is not exactly subtle, complete with pictures of coronal mass ejections and other hyperbole. But there is some innovation going on here and I'm pretty curious if it will work as designed without a lot of do-over.
Yeah, this drives me crazy. You get this kind of response whenever anybody funds a new tokamak, or particle accelerator, or free electron laser, or petawatt laser, or whatever. There's over a hundred of these things, they aren't on the scale of the LHC.