The Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) is a next generation radioactive beam facility designed to provide experimental access to large unexplored regions of the nuclear landscape. To do this, RIA makes use of standard ISOL and in‐flight fragmentation technology together with novel approaches to handle high primary beam power and remove existing limitations in the extraction of short‐lived isotopes. The use of a versatile primary accelerator allows various production and extraction schemes to be used to optimize production of specific isotopes. These isotopes are then available for studies at ion source energy or can be further accelerated by a superconducting linac whose novel injection system allows the efficient acceleration from ion source energy of singly‐charged heavy ions with masses up to 240 amu. The high‐intensity radioactive beams at RIA will be made available to experimental areas spanning the energy regime from ion source energy to primary beam energy. © 2003 American Institute of Physics