Re:Yes, but is it REALLY working? (Score 1)

The question now becomes: will this generate more energy than it takes? And can it sustain power generation?

Ignition is the condition whereby more energy is generated than was required in the first place. This is the goal NIF are aiming for and, by all accounts, will achieve in the next couple of years. The big problems come in trying to scale this up to a commercially viable power plant. Currently, the targets used in NIF cost ~$1000 each, and for a power plant ten are required every second.

And will ITER be quickly refactored to take this into account? Will the EU combine HiPER (high-energy laser projects) and ITER? Will the USA share its latest discovery with its ITER partners?

ITER and NIF/HiPER are two completely different ways of achieving fusion - magnetic confinement and inertial confinement fusion. There is no need to 'refactor' ITER in light of the NIF results, since for the most part these results don't impact on ITER. Potentially, we could use both methods to generate energy in the future but they are completely distinct projects.

And, let's admit everything works: what quantity of nuclear waste will such a machine produce? And of what type?

I'm not sure about NIF since I work in magnetic confinement fusion, but in ITER, the main radiactive product will be tritium, whose half-life is just 12 years. This means that within a century, all materials from ITER should be perfectly safe to recycle. Also, there is only ever a few grams of fuel in any fusion experiment, so if something goes wrong there can't be any huge explosions, This is one of the reasons for the often cited inherent safety of fusion power.