I think it's the "consecutive" that makes it funny. This thing that entire continents have been working on together for decades was operational for 20 consecutive minutes?!?

It's dark comedy because the progress of fusion just feels so agonizingly slow, that even a very optimistic prediction for 10 years from now sounds like such small and functionally useless progress.

And there's no shade toward any of the entities involved, it's a hard problem, but it's still funny.