It's a very safe bet. Well, probably not a math error as they are quite a fine institution, but what he says is probably the case.
The challenges of fusion power are largely fundamental nitty gritty engineering issues. We know fairly well how to design most of a fusion reactor; in a lot of ways they are conceptually easier than fission reactors.
The two main hurdles are the materials problems and how to keep the reaction critical with radiative heat loss. These are big problems that so many times have been ignored by people claiming to have solved fusion power. You just can't get away from them, but solving them would be truly revolutionary.
I'm not saying they don't have something novel here as they really are some fine researchers at Skunkworks. Just temper your expectations.
> The challenges of fusion power are largely fundamental nitty gritty engineering issues.
I'm not saying they've done it and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof but this is the place that made a Mach 3.5 jet with wings that leaked out of titanium in the 60's.
Nitty-gritty engineering is something they are fairly good at.
Indeed, believe me I hope I'm wrong and that fusion power really is around the corner. It's just that, according to the article, they aren't even at the prototype phase yet. That's where the real problems for fusion reactors arise. I'm sure that they've done something interesting, but my (semi-expert, I'm a nuclear engineering PhD, but not in fusion technology) opinion, this doesn't look like The Big Discovery.
Tokamaks were perfect on paper till they were fired up, and then we realized that there is a lot about high energy confinement we did not know about. So I think the math is correct according to current models, but whether those models are close enough to reality for this to work is another question entirely.
