[jve]

Moreover she communicates that to achieve the desired goal, Qtotal is the one that must exceed 1, and that is harder to achieve. That is, total electrical energy generated to exceed total energy to run the system. You have losses down the road, particularly when converting heat to electricity.

It doesn't take away from research that is being done/must be done, but rather how far we are today from the results.

[pyinstallwoes]

> JET’s latest experiment sustained a Q of 0.33 for 5 seconds, says Rimini. JET is a scaled-down version of ITER, at one-tenth of the volume — a bathtub compared to a swimming pool, says Proll. It loses heat more easily than ITER, so it was never expected to hit breakeven. If engineers applied the same conditions and physics approach to ITER as to JET, she says, it would probably reach its goal of a Q of 10, producing ten times the energy put in.

"If engineers applied the same conditions and physics..."

"...probably reach its goal of a Q of 10..."

So casually thrown about!

Source (the OP nature article): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00391-1