'World-first' waste-burning reactor: China eyes 1000-year nuclear energy

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) are finalizing the installation of superconducting particle accelerators for a pioneering Accelerator-driven subcritical system (ADS) nuclear reactor in Guangdong province, aiming to launch the world’s first megawatt-level waste-burning reactor by 2027. This innovative reactor addresses two major challenges in nuclear power: safety and long-term radioactive waste. By burning uranium 100 times more efficiently than conventional reactors and transmuting long-lived radioactive waste into shorter-lived isotopes, the ADS technology could reduce nuclear waste’s hazardous lifespan to less than a thousandth of its current duration, potentially providing a stable and green energy source for the next 1,000 years. The ADS system is a hybrid combining a nuclear reactor with a high-energy particle accelerator that fires proton beams at 80% the speed of light into a liquid lead-bismuth alloy, generating neutrons that convert otherwise waste uranium-238 into usable plutonium-239 fuel. Because the reactor depends on an external