Comment by smaddox

1 MJ is enough to vaporize roughly half a liter of water that started at room temperature. That's nothing to sneaze at. Obviously you would need to do with a high rate (e.g. once per second) in order for it to be viable for power production. No reason the lasers couldn't do that. The challenge is making the pellets cost effective at scale. Currently, they cost something like $10k each.