It is necessary since they banned the testing of nuclear weapons. Before they would do this kind of research by imploding a cylinder of uranium encasing a hydro

It is necessary since they banned the testing of nuclear weapons. Before they would do this kind of research by imploding a cylinder of uranium encasing a hydrogen core with X-rays produced by a "Fat Man" style bomb. Now they implode a cylindrical casing full of hydrogen by x-rays caused by a laser vaporizing an outer layer. “It’s a big milestone, but NIF is not a fusion-energy device,” says Dave Hammer, a nuclear engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Herrmann acknowledges as much, saying that there are many steps on the path to laser fusion energy. “NIF was not designed to be efficient,” he says. “It was designed to be the biggest laser we could possibly build to give us the data we need for the [nuclear] stockpile research programme.” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7