[cstross]

What you're missing is that since the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty came into effect it's illegal to test-detonate nuclear weapons. Which are narrowly defined in terms of fission devices, with or without a fusion booster.

Fission devices have been very well understood since the early 1950s, but fusion reactions are somewhat less so. The NIF provides an instrument for probing the plasma densities and temperatures that occur inside a nuclear fireball, so is directly relevant to H-bomb research.

This becomes trivially obvious when you realize that a laser implosion fusion reactor producing power would need to achieve in excess of ten ignitions per second to produce the sort of power output needed just to power its own lasers ... and that each hohlraum costs on the order of a third of a million dollars. (What kind of power plant costs $11Bn per hour to operate?) Answer: it's not a remotely practical design for generating electricity, so it must be something else, and promoting it as "clean energy from fusion power" is a cynical propaganda move to disguise a nuclear weapons research tool.

The final clue is that the NIF is operated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose primary job is designing and ensuring the reliability of nuclear weapons.

[aristophenes]

This is why I often read the comments more than the articles here on hacker news.