Given that over $5 billion will be spent just in preconstruction costs there better be some positive effects.

NIF's cost was estimated at $677 million in 1993. In 1997, the DOE asked for $1.2 billion for NIF construction and promised Congress there would be no further increases. On June 1, 2001, the General Accounting Office (GAO) estimated NIF's construction price tag to be $4.2 billion. That same year, a Livermore Lab watchdog organization commissioned Dr. Robert Civiak, a former White House budget official, to undertake an independent analysis of NIF's costs. Dr. Civiak found that NIF's pre-construction costs were likely to top $5 billion and that the full cost to build and operate NIF for 30 years, as DOE plans, would amount to $32.4 billion.

I'm not saying that NIF is without merit, but tradeoffs of cost benefit must be compared to what else could be done with these large sums. Also, it appears clear the project is the usual cluster f*ck as far as budgetary planning. Taxpayers deserved to be told the truth at the beginning of these large projects rather than having cooked books sell the low cost and then utilize budgetary overrun requests to keep it going. In the private world, it is merciless when someone exceeds budget by multiple times and the people who plan/budget such projects don't last. I wish we could have similar project cuts and people cuts on the govt side so we could get the best people planning and budgeting such projects. The politicians who use such shenanigans for their private pork projects need to be voted away too, but it will never happen.

I don't have specific opininion about NIF as I haven't done enough analysis of the project, but clearly it has problems consistent with being a large govt project.