Far ahead of you, a lot of the non-stewardship and non-ignition work of NIF is for creating neutrons, although you don't even need ignition levels of energy to

Far ahead of you, a lot of the non-stewardship and non-ignition work of NIF is for creating neutrons, although you don't even need ignition levels of energy to make neutrons with lasers. Although the research is premature and the beams aren't as good as spallation sources, tabletop (as in a laser table a few metres across) ultra-intense laser systems have been generating neutron beams in a single room for almost a decade+ now, we just need to improve the beams and get the word out there.