I found this technology very promising about 20 years ago.
The glass bead now seems to be a good bit larger than it originally was.
Still after the initial explosion loading the next bead into place for the next explosion is troublesome.
It's good competition for tokamaks which are more of a continuous process but troubled by magnetic field containment.
I don't care which technology matures first just so long as we eventually get controllable fusion power.
We thought we were so much closer so many times in the past that I'm still in favor of investing in thorium MSR breader reactors, if for no other reason to feed our nuclear waste to it and to make more Uranium 233 for nuclear spacecraft like the Voyagers. The last time we needed some we had to buy it from Russia, since there's none available on Earth in nature, the half life is too short, but it's an astonishingly useful form of nuclear power where space and weight are at a premium.