As it was already mentioned in the threads like this before, the NIF was built using the technology that was available in those years of the past when NIF was planned and started. Flash lamp pumped lasers are bigger, more expensive and much less efficient, i.e. mere few percents efficiency at best vs. tens of percent efficiency of modern laser diode pumped IR lasers. (Even with such improvement though, i still think laser driven fusion is inferior to many other forms of inertial confinement and much less probable to result in system-level break-even. My personal favorite, Sandia Z-machine is on the scale of 15% efficiency of generating X-ray pulse, and schemes like deep plasma focus or polywell by-pass the energy to radiation conversion stage all together and thus avoid related losses.)
As it was already mentioned in the threads like this before, the NIF was built using the technology that was available in those years of the past when NIF was planned and started. Flash lamp pumped lasers are bigger, more expensive and much less efficient, i.e. mere few percents efficiency at best vs. tens of percent efficiency of modern laser diode pumped IR lasers. (Even with such improvement though, i still think laser driven fusion is inferior to many other forms of inertial confinement and much less probable to result in system-level break-even. My personal favorite, Sandia Z-machine is on the scale of 15% efficiency of generating X-ray pulse, and schemes like deep plasma focus or polywell by-pass the energy to radiation conversion stage all together and thus avoid related losses.)