Been hearing about this technology since forever so be good if they have finally done it.
they have been ramping it up for several years, but they are only getting about 67% energy return. Every time they turn it up, they discover new challenges, that is why they have been working on this one since about 2018. I don't know why they wrote the story now, they have been working on it for years and they don't expect to hit break even this year.
Under the name “cold fusion” ( a metaphor for “room temperature fusion” ) for part of the time since the 1920s, it has been failling according to wikipedia.
Cold Fusion has been mostly discredited since 1989. The Chinese HL-2M tokamak has been undergoing refinement since 2006, with the plasma temperatures being stepped up slowly. Since they are creating conditions that do not exist on the surface of the earth, every iteration reveals new problems. They have reached 180 million degrees (kelvin?) and hope to double that this year. If they can achieve 360 million degrees, they will likely achieve energy parity, the point where the energy produced equals the energy required to run the reactor.