Apparatus for obtaining 14‐Mev neutrons in pulses of approximately 10‐&mgr;sec duration is described. It employs a gaseous discharge in deuterium at low pressure whereby deuterons of up to 180‐kev energy are generated and accelerated into a tritiated zirconium target. This method provides a much greater abundance of deuterons than has been obtainable with ion guns. In its present form the device constructed has given yields approaching the theoretically expected value of 1010neutrons per pulse.