>> There's also a firing rate issue. Even if the system produced net power, significant production would require many shots per second. Currently, the laser flash lamps are expendable and it takes on the order of a day (and lots of money) to prep for each shot.
Oh, but then there's this part:
>> Further experiments will require the manufacture of additional fuel capsules and hohlraums. These may not be ready until at least October, Herrmann says. The nanocrystalline diamond-coated capsule that was imploded in this month’s event took six months to grow at General Atomics, which has long worked with LLNL on fabricating capsules. The spheres have to be polished and the core’s interior etched with tools inserted through a 2-micron-diameter hole drilled into it. The tritium–deuterium mixture is injected through a tiny fill tube just prior to the shot.