In 1983 I toured the Nova laser site you can see in the illustration while it was being constructed. It's very real stuff, the walls of the collision chamber were 8 feet thick to keep the (projected) neutron flux from harming people and things (transmuting ... which is why current fusion approaches almost certainly won't be practical power plants, we need aneutronic fusion (e.g. H3) for that.

As a side note, these laser systems are great for nuclear weapons simulations and 3rd generation (vectored, e.g. X-ray/gamma laser) nuclear weapons development.