I've recently finished reading "Something Feels Strange", and just saw this blog post while searching for something in the story. I really hope that this work is an unclassified part of LLNL's work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion

The CNN story itself: I saw a number of things to gripe about:

1. Extracting deuterium and tritium from seawater. Deuterium, yes. Tritium, no. Tritium is radioactive, and virtually none remains. Tritium has to be made.
2. Microscopic nuclear fusion had been attained as far back as almost 90 years, involving perhaps a few thousand atoms. (The article implies that fusion had yet to be attained.)
3. Macroscopic fusion (involving around 10^17 atoms or more) occurs in thermonuclear weapons. (Yes the article mentions them once.)
4. Nuclear fusion experiments have already generated macroscopic fusion for energy production before this article was written, and (IIRC) even attained more energy than used to produce.
5. Calling it a star. The reactions are different from stellar reactions, and one gets nothing but an explosion in the version used by the NIF.

Interesting factoid: A cubic meter near the sun's center fuses perhaps 10^15 protons every second. (The power produced in a cubic meter is surprisingly low.) Proton-proton fusion is far-far more difficult than deuteron-triton fusion.