The reaction at the sun’s core is the fusion of hydrogen-1, which in spite of the temperatures generated, is extremely slow. With conditions where the density is equivalent of a specific gravity of about 150, and temperatures in hundreds of Kelvins, the power density is only 275 watts per cubic meter. That’s really slower than mammalian metabolism, as a comparison. Much of this is due to the comparitive electrostatic repulsion to be overcome to slam protons together. Not so much for deuterons and tritons, which is also the fuel for thermonukes. The power density in a fusion weapon going off is far higher than the core of the sun. Another evidence of the lower energy threshold for D-T fusion is brown dwarf objects. While not massive enough to initiate P-P fusion (minimum mass is around 0.08 to 0.10 solar masses), if there are traces of deuterium or lithium, there would be short lived fusion reactions, although they will not last long at all on an astronomical timescale.
There is one problem with using laser based inertial confinement. After a pulse, the neodynium glass rods used by the lasers need to cool down. Even a speck of dust on the rods will cause them to shatter when the xenon flashtubes go off to pump the rods into lasing. Electron beams for internal confinement might work better, look up the “Z-Machine” in use at Sandia.
Yeah, my uncle stunned me with that one many years ago, "A human radiates more energy per unit mass than the sun." Along with the seemingly paradoxical fact, "A pinhead at the temperature of the center of the sun would kill a man a mile away." ( I still rely on my uncle's authority for that one! )
I believe you will find this is factually incorrect.
The reason for using neutron-rich reactants is that the comparatively neutron-rich result products are better stabilized by the strong nuclear force. The P-P reaction is not slower because of Coulomb interaction, but because the diproton nucleus is unstable, it decays too quickly; there is no binding, and no binding energy is released as a result. P-P stabilization is achieved through the intermediary of a weak interaction which flips one of the up-quarks in one of the protons into a down quark. The result is a neutron, a positron, and a neutrino. The nuclear result product changes from an unstable He isotope (diproton) into deuterium, which is stable. However, this weak interaction is quite rare. As a result, most P-P reactions actually fail, even in the center of the sun. This is why the sun burns "slowly."
Neutrons do not "shield" protons at the internuclear distances required to ignite fusion; they simply add additional binding energy via the strong nuclear force. For all practical purposes, the Coulomb repulsion of two deuterons or two tritons or two protons (or any other combination thereof) is identical to the Coulomb repulsion of two bare protons.
If neutrons could effectively shield the electromagnetic force, they would also shield an atom's own electrons from its protons, changing the atomic orbitals of isotopes, and the chemical properties of isotopes would be different (17O and 18O would be less oxidizing than 16O, for example.) But the chemical properties of isotopes are not different, because neutrons do not have this capability.