Extension comes as government encourages first nuclear power projects in a generation to meet UK’s growing need for electricity

Britain’s most recently completed nuclear power plant will continue generating electricity until 2055 after the government granted the power plant a 20-year life extension.

Sizewell B in Suffolk was due to shut down within the next decade, but under a deal with the government its lifetime will be extended to 60 years to help meet the UK’s growing demand for low-carbon electricity.

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© Photograph: Chris Radburn/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Chris Radburn/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Chris Radburn/AFP/Getty Images

Oil prices are likely to remain volatile as long as the United States and Iran are unable to resolve the status of the Strait of Hormuz.

© The New York Times

Solar is set to oust coal as the leading generator of electricity within six years, BloombergNEF finds in its latest energy transition outlook, despite a first ever slight dip in installations in 2026. “Solar is the cheapest source of power in many countries, and is proving the easiest and fastest to deploy,” said Jenny Chase, BNEF’s clean power specialist. “Its role in the global energy mix will be substantial, ushering in a new age where power is cheap whenever the sun shines.”

This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showcases Messier 3 (M3), one of the Milky Way galaxy’s most massive globular clusters, or spherical collections of gravitationally bound stars. Globular clusters are made up of ancient stars that formed at roughly the same time from the same cloud of gas, giving those stars similar ages. Around 150 known globular clusters are sprinkled around the outer regions of the Milky Way.

Learn more about M3.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Sarajedini (Florida Atlantic University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

As the newly elected president, Abelardo de la Espriella, pledges to exploit oil reserves, environmentalists prepare to defend climate progress

It is hard for Yuvelis Morales Blanco to pinpoint when her activism started. Now 25, she recalls getting involved in land rights and environmental issues in Santander, northern Colombia, from a young age. Living near water, she says, has always shaped her connection to nature. “My parents are fishers on the Magdalena, Colombia’s most important river,” says Morales. “For us, the river isn’t just food – it embodies life, identity and culture.”

In April, she received the Goldman environmental prize for her leadership in Puerto Wilches, where she succeeded in halting oil extraction and fracking. Yet, it seems her struggle is only just beginning.

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© Photograph: Iván Valencia/AP

© Photograph: Iván Valencia/AP

© Photograph: Iván Valencia/AP

There are far better ways to tackle climate breakdown, but successive governments have chosen to listen to the fossil fuel companies instead

The new prime minister will be looking for money? Well, here’s £21.7bn lying on the ground. The government could cancel its deranged, disastrous carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme at no cost to public welfare: in fact, it would greatly reduce the harm we will suffer.

Sorry, did I say £21.7bn? That’s the figure the government has been putting in its press releases for spending on this programme between now and 2050. But this covers only the first phase of the project. The climate experts Dr Andrew Boswell and Simon Oldridge worked through the data produced by the government’s Climate Change Committee, which was scattered across different spreadsheets, and discovered that the projected cost of the full CCS programme between now and 2050 is £264bn.

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© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian

© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian

© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02141-z

A shoebox-sized detector satellite could identify the telltale signal of a hidden nuclear device — plus, how Indigenous plant knowledge is under threat.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10796-x

A systematic evaluation shows that contemporary humanoid robots can perform laparoscopic surgical tasks through teleoperation, highlighting both their promise and key technical challenges before clinical deployment.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10737-8

Epitope editing of KIT enables antibody-based, non-genotoxic conditioning that selectively enriches therapeutic BCL11A-edited haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, supports durable engraftment, preserves clonal diversity and enhances induction of fetal haemoglobin, a therapeutic approach for conditions such as sickle cell disease and β-thalassemia.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10744-9

The structure of the Hdr–Vhu–Fwd super-assembly reveals a lineage-specific and modular 8 MDa complex with the ability to adapt to diverse anaerobic niches.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10759-2

By integrating reinforcement learning with quantum error correction, a quantum computer continuously self-calibrates during computation, achieving record logical error rates and enhanced resilience to drift.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10742-x

Large language models can be used to estimate the results of social science experiments about as accurately as a group of human forecasters—even for experiments published after the models were trained—although they tended to overestimate effect sizes.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10785-0

By combining hydroacoustic, direct-path ranging and bottom-pressure measurements, in situ observations of a rifting event at a segment of the Southeast Indian Ridge are reported, providing insight into seafloor spreading events on yearly timescales.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10622-4

This Review examines the opportunities and challenges introduced by new datasets and computational techniques in urban crime research, and outlines future directions for leveraging these advances effectively.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10761-8

Radio-frequency switches made from two-dimensional layered hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) were co-integrated on gallium nitride (GaN) microchips to build programmable millimetre-wave (mmWave) monolithic microwave integrated circuits suitable for 6G hardware.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10712-3

Viscoelastic phase separation is used to fabricate non-collapsible, air-rich networks in high-water-content hydrogels containing silica aerogel beads, allowing air to permeate through the material and enabling a tenfold increase in oxygen permeability over pristine hydrogels.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10752-9

Screening of chromosome arm-level aneuploidies uncovers that these alterations select for specific basal-like breast cancer driver genes, including PLGRKT, an oncogene whose tumour-promoting activity is associated with highly stress-resistant mitochondria and enhanced detoxification of reactive oxygen species.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10703-4

An ATAC-seq-based approach is used to classify acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) into 16 epigenomic subgroups, and provides insight into the role of non-genetic mechanisms in determining pathogenesis, clinical behaviour and drug sensitivity in this disease.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10750-x

Diet shapes obesity-associated therapeutic responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors through gut microbial metabolism and host anti-tumour immunity, demonstrated in mouse custom-diet models and human-to-mouse fecal microbiota transplantation experiments.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10755-6

The ARP2/3 complex works together with actomyosin in an oscillatory program at the soma to govern neuronal polarization.