Well, first of all, who was talking about plugging the thing into a household outlet? The original article had to do with a very specialized piece of equipment made by e2v, a UK company which produces a pretty wide range of small-volume RF gear.
But also - it's not at all impossible that such a device could be powered by an "ordinary household outlet" (although I would certainly doubt that this one IS). You're confusing power with energy (which is the product of power and the time over which that power is delivered). As another response pointed out, running this thing for even a full second represents only about 1 kWh (kilowatt-hour) of electric energy; a standard 15A outlet would provide that much energy in about 35 minutes. And that's exactly how you use such "standard outlets" to create high power pulses. You bring the energy in to the system at whatever rate you can and store it (say, in a large bank of capacitors), and then discharge the whole thing in a short pulse.
1 kWh of electrical energy is, just to give one common example, is roughly what's contained in a moderate-sized car battery.
Bob M.
