It used deuterium. Which is a type of hydrogen, although yes, it is much easier to fuse and much less common than protium. But sure, they actually used something else only good for weapons research instead, because as a non-expert you can just tell. 
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If you don’t see what’s wrong with that analogy then I’m afraid I can’t help you. You’re staking a ridiculous claim here. This is open, transparent, publicly funded research. You can go read all the papers yourself.
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“Well, Mr Manfrengensen, …” is one of my favourite movie lines.
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Ok, zero evidence other than what LLNL does, plus the total unlikelihood of this ever being an energy source, plus the obvious similarities between this experiment and what goes on in a weapon.
I’m not the only one making this observation:
I’m totally ok with both fusion energy and nuclear weapons research. In my opinion the US needs to do whatever is necessary to keep its nuclear weapons functional and modern, and fusion energy holds tremendous potential and value. Both are good goals for me! And the science research they do on this may have all kinds of unknown uses in the future. Who knows, maybe this could be a propulsion system on some far-future interstellar space ship.
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You keep saying “what LLNL does”, but the fact that McDonald’s makes hamburgers isn’t real evidence that they put beef in the ketchup. And yes, I get you think you can taste it there, but that’s not much evidence either.
I mean, you started by admitting this isn’t a field you actually understand. You couldn’t even be bothered to look into it further – part of your evidence was how everything just says “hydrogen” but it took maybe half a minute to find out more. Why then are you dedicated to dying on this hill?
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I take it that you’ve read this article in Scientific American, then?
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I haven’t seen that! But that basically is saying, the purpose of the NIF is weapons research, mainly to validate simulation work. And it explains something which is pretty obvious: the scientists have been doing lots of simulations over the years since the test ban went into effect, but you can’t believe your simulation is accurate without some way to verify it, and that’s what the NIF is for. It makes total sense.
Most important, however, the data they [laser experiments] yield, along with information from nuclear tests conducted before the ban, are fed into sophisticated simulations that conduct virtual thermonuclear explosions in a supercomputer.
Yeah, of course that’s what the National Ignition Facility is for. If it helps us make electricity some day far in the future, or has some other ancillary benefits, I’m cool with that also.
I honestly don’t get what everyone is arguing about. It’s no secret that they do this kind of research (and it’s not like the research can be used to build nuclear weapons). At the same time, this kind of (super expensive) research is always multifaceted and will usually have multiple applications.
The fact is that they used the same (super expensive) equipment that they often use to study fusion reactions in nuclear weapons to produce a net-gain fusion reaction.
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One of many things LLNL does…
According to a non-physicist…
The most useless, low-yield, fizzy weapon…
Elon, go home. You’re drunk.
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A propos of nothing: nuclear powered hole-digging.
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Ha, it’s not my idea. There’s a Wiki article about the possibility of using inertial confinement fusion as a space drive. Far future stuff.
Ehh… no, it really is exactly like what’s going on in the secondary stage, which is the most important stage for energy and neutron release, and also (seems to me) the most tricky. If you read that Wiki article the whole National Ignition Facility suddenly makes a lot of sense, and then realize that simulations of what’s happening in the secondary are only meaningful if they can be validated in some way.
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