Lockheed-Martin's Skunk Works is trying to build a useful fusion reactor using a somewhat similar approach.[1] They announced this a few years ago, and last fall, their people gave a talk at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. (There's video, but it won't play in Firefox on Linux.[2])

It's striking that a very capable organization is working on this.

[1] http://www.pppl.gov/events/colloquium-lockheed-martin-compac... [2] https://mediacentral.princeton.edu/media/Thursday+Colloquium...