Newshot "Burning Up" Nuclear Waste: World's First Accelerator Driven System Research Facility Expected to Be Completed Next Year in Huizhou, Guangdong
IT Home, November 13 news: According to reports from Science Courtyard, Southern+, and Huizhou Release, the world's first Accelerator Driven Transmutation (shàn biàn) research facility (CiADS) is under intensive construction and is expected to be completed in 2027.
Once CiADS is completed, scientists are expected to use it to carry out key research, laying the foundation for developing a new generation nuclear energy system that is safe, green, and sustainable for more than a thousand years.
How to handle "nuclear waste" is a worldwide challenge. CiADS is internationally recognized as an ideal pathway for achieving efficient use of nuclear fuel and safe disposal of nuclear waste. The core idea is to build a proton accelerator that accelerates protons to near the speed of light, then fires them at a heavy metal target (such as liquid lead-bismuth), releasing enormous numbers of neutrons.
These neutrons are injected into a specially designed "subcritical reactor" that does not itself sustain a spontaneous chain reaction. There, the neutrons bombard long-lived high-level nuclear waste, "shattering" it and converting it into short-lived or stable nuclides, which can greatly reduce the toxicity of nuclear waste and the duration of its hazard.
After more than a decade of research, the Chinese team developed an ADS superconducting linear accelerator prototype in 2021 and achieved breakthroughs in key indicators, paving the way for CiADS construction.
An IT Home search found that a feasibility study report published in 2018 by the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences showed that the CiADS project has 42,550 square meters of newly built floor area, a total investment of 1.817 billion yuan, and a construction period of 6 years.
The CiADS project aims to build the world's first megawatt-class accelerator driven transmutation research facility achieving high-power coupled operation, in which the fully superconducting accelerator driven system has a thermal power of 10 megawatts, including a beam power of about 2.5 megawatts, and the subcritical reactor core / blanket has a thermal power of about 7.5 megawatts, enabling more than 24 hours of full-power coupled operation in a single run.
Through key technical experiment verification and performance evaluation, it will explore technical routes and processes for the safe and proper treatment and disposal of nuclear waste, providing support for China to take the lead in mastering accelerator driven subcritical system integration and nuclear waste transmutation technologies.
The CiADS facility mainly includes a superconducting linear accelerator, a high-power spallation target, a subcritical reactor core / blanket, an overall control system, and related supporting facilities.
At present, the CiADS project has entered the critical stage of equipment installation and integrated commissioning. Key subsystems such as the front end of its superconducting linear accelerator and the prototype of the liquid lead-bismuth spallation target have successively completed development and testing, and the facility is expected to be completed in 2027.
Once CiADS is completed, coupling operation experiments from low power to high power will be carried out to verify the scientific and engineering feasibility of ADS, marking a milestone step for humanity on the ADS path.
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