Electromagnetic forces (electric and magnetic forces of attraction and repulsion) are incredibly strong. As Feynman said in one of his first lectures on Physics in 1962, if you had one grain of sand made of pure electrons and another made of pure protons, the force pulling them together would be 30 TONS. Or, if both were electrons, or both were protons, the force of repulsion would be 30 TONS.

This is why, just with largely cancelled fields of electromagnetic forces (viz., electrons paired in atoms with protons, but only a few electrons exposed in the outer shell biasing the atoms to negative or positive (electric and magnetic) charge), electric motors are so incredibly powerful. It is also why everything feels hard and your body does not just fall without resistance to the center of the earth.

Lasers look powerful, but the force (momentum) of light (sadly self-cancelling, neutralized, electric and magnetic force) is nothing like the electric and magnetic force of electromagnetism in terms of the momentum (kinetic energy) they can impart on the components of atoms. And why containment works and can also be used to propel atoms with great power at each other.

Helion seems to have a good idea.