There are a number of other ways to generate neutrons from fusion that are continuous and work. Almost any scheme that accelerates deuterons and collides them with deuterons or tritons will do the trick.
Fairly standard potential drop accelerators do this quite well (described in "the Amateur Scientist", for instance), and was probably the first experimental way of seeing fusion (and probably how a lot of the cross section tables were made).
Various trapping schemes have also been used to generate continuous neutron fluxes.
There are commercially available neutron generator tubes used in the oil business and in various materials science applications, and of course, there are electrically operated pulsed neutron generators in most (if not all) modern nuclear weapons.
The appeal of the IECF is that you get significant (in a statistical sense) yields at fairly high pressures and low voltages. The accelerators run at 100 kV kinds of potentials.
And, the appeal to the amateur (meaning here, poorly and self funded) is that they can get something pretty amazing working with limited dollars, but a lot of ingenuity and time. Remember that most fundamental nuclear physics experiments (including discovery of neutrons, artificial elements, fission, fusion, etc.) were literally done with sealing wax and baling wire.
I don't have any illusions that a small scale effort will, by itself, solve the world's energy problems. Any significant scaleup is going cost some serious money, and require multiple people working on it. But then, so do ocean racing yachts and Formula 1 racing teams.
However, the small efforts do provide a "goad" to policy makers, etc. They "prove" that it is possible to get started, and put the onus of "proving it can't be done" on the other side.
Finally, remember that funding (public OR private) for medium to large projects is rarely based solely on technical merit alone (if at all). Sometimes its based on effective utilization of resources that you have now, or that you want to keep for something else in the future (all those ex-soviet nuclear folks... keep them doing tokamak research, because at least they won't go selling their services to "bad people").
Only in the smallest of projects (<$50-100K) do you have the real possibility of unfettered tinkering.
Created on Tuesday, January 23, 2001 7:31 PM EDT by James Lux