‘1,000-year source’: China plans to fire up world-first accelerator-driven nuclear reactor

Device deemed to burn uranium 100 times more efficiently, while cutting nuclear waste lifespan to less than a thousandth of current span2-MIN READ2-MINPublished: 11:59am, 6 Mar 2026China will soon power up an ultra-efficient, nuclear waste-burning reactor with a groundbreaking technology that it projects will safely meet humanity’s energy needs for the next 1,000 years.Accelerator-driven subcritical systems (ADS) are advanced nuclear reactors that can both generate energy and transmute long-lived radioactive waste into shorter-lived and less hazardous isotopes.Designed by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) along with state nuclear enterprises, the China Initiative Accelerator Driven System will be the world’s first megawatt-level prototype of such a system once it goes online in southern China’s Guangdong province next year.02:41Japan residents protest against planned reopening of world’s largest nuclear power plantJapan residents protest against planned reopening of world’s largest nuclear power plantHe Yuan, deputy director of the Institute of Modern Physics under CAS, said the system was an “internationally recognised ideal approach for nuclear fuel breeding and nuclear waste treatment”, according to a report by the official ministry newspaper, Science and Technology Daily, on March 2.It could turn nuclear power into a “green, safe, stable energy source for 1,000 years”, according to the report.Despite the promise of this design, there are no commercial systems operating worldwide, with only experimental projects such as China’s in development, according to the institute.He said that the institute aimed to complete the installation of the system’s superconducting particle accelerators – which were key to powering the system – this year.While much of the used fuel from conventional nuclear reactors decays fairly rapidly, a significant portion of used nuclear fuel is long-lived actinides, which can remain hazardous for tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of years.