Inertial confinement fusion requires fairly expensive targets to collapse. To make it economically viable they have to produce a lot more energy per target destroyed.
The targets are only expensive because they aren't produced at scale yet.
They are the exact kind of thing a machine could churn millions of per day out, and then use them at the same rate.
Even if the targets were made of expensive materials (eg. platinum), most of that platinum could later be recovered from the reactor wall, so it still wouldn't be very expensive.
"most of that platinum could later be recovered from the reactor wall, so it still wouldn't be very expensive. "
And recovering comes for free?
Every step costs energy (or money).
There is no working design yet. It is waay too early to make any predictions about how scaling could reduce costs. Scaling can even increase costs, if it depletes limited resources like tritium.
Why wouldn't a final Q of 50 be economically viable? Interest on capital costs? Other?