Proton accelerators for driving transmutation applications have beam power requirements in the range 40 MW to 400 MW, which corresponds to energy and current performance requirements in the range 800 MeV to 1600 MeV, and 50 mA to 250 mA. Linear accelerator designs aimed at providing these performance levels have been studied at Los Alamos for the past few years. Appropiate accelerator architectures have been developed, using the existing technology base for water‐cooled‐copper linacs, and key technical issues have been identified and addressed. ©American Institute of Physics 1995