Thorium vehicle will run 100 years on 8 grams of fuel

[PamW]

22. Correct.

Although NIF is getting closer and closer to ignition; the NIF is not a power production facility even when it achieves ignition.

The NIF lasers are glass lasers; the lasing medium is a flash-lamped pumped slab of glass doped with neodynium:

https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/nif/how_nif_works/amplifiers.php

NIF's amplifiers use 3,072 42-kilogram neodymium-doped phosphate glass slabs, measuring 3.4 by 46 by 81 centimeters and set on edge at a specific angle, known as Brewster's angle, so that the laser beams have very low reflective losses while propagating through the glass.

After the laser fires, it takes many hours to cool the whole thing down before one can reset for another shot. So any power producing plant will NOT use glass-laser technology. However, LLNL has developed a number of high-power solid state lasers that look promising:

https://www.llnl.gov/str/Payne.html

https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/psa/directed_energy/sshcl.php

LLNL has a number of potential concepts for fusion power plants designed under a program called "LIFE":

https://life.llnl.gov/

The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it.
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

PamW