NIF is pretty universally panned as an approach to commercial fusion. It's more about doing basic science on plasmas and fusion and of course researching thermo

NIF is pretty universally panned as an approach to commercial fusion. It's more about doing basic science on plasmas and fusion and of course researching thermonuclear weapons without actually doing real (dirty) nuclear tests. That being said, sometimes technology can do surprising things. If some other line of research somewhere yields, say, lasers that are multiple orders of magnitude more efficient then suddenly things might change and ICF would become a viable path. The massive inefficiency of lasers is the largest single problem. The main reason magnetic containment is so much better than ICF is that huge electromagnets are more efficient than lasers plus inertia at confining the plasma.