Stellantis has integrated Factorial Energy’s solid-state battery cells into a Dodge Charger Daytona development vehicle and begun road testing the technology, marking a key step toward bringing solid-state batteries into production vehicles.

The milestone is the first time Factorial’s FEST (Factorial Electrolyte System Technology) solid-state cells have been installed in a Stellantis vehicle. The companies will now evaluate battery performance, reliability, and safety under real-world driving and charging conditions.

The development follows laboratory validation completed in 2025, when Stellantis and Factorial demonstrated automotive-scale FEST cells with an energy density of 375 Wh/kg. The cells also achieved charging from 15 percent to 90 percent in 18 minutes and operated across temperatures ranging from -22 °F to 113 °F.

Moving from laboratory testing to an on-road vehicle required engineers to redesign parts of the battery system. Stellantis said it developed a patented mechanical architecture that allows the solid-state cells to fit within an existing battery pack while maximizing performance.

From lab to road

Engineers also modified battery controls and pack design to meet automotive requirements for durability and safety. According to the companies, these changes were needed to ensure consistent performance under a range of driving and charging conditions.

The battery pack is based on Stellantis’ STLA Large platform and serves as the first vehicle in a previously announced multi-stage development program.

“Battery development is a balancing act. It’s not enough to optimize a single metric. We need a system that delivers real benefits in a real vehicle,” said Ned Curic, Stellantis Chief Engineering and Technology Officer.

“This milestone shows we are bringing solid-state batteries closer to our customers with the potential for longer range, faster charging, and lower costs. Just as important, FEST’s strong compatibility with lithium-ion manufacturing processes gives us a critical path to scale this technology.”

Solid-state batteries replace the liquid electrolyte used in conventional lithium-ion batteries with a solid material. The technology is expected to improve energy density, increase safety, and reduce charging times. However, scaling production and integrating the cells into vehicles have remained major challenges for automakers and battery developers.

Scaling battery technology

With the battery now installed in a working vehicle, Stellantis and Factorial have launched a testing and calibration program to gather performance data from real-world operation.

The companies said the program will evaluate charging behavior, vehicle safety, and long-term reliability. The results will also help refine battery management systems and pack-level controls before any future commercial deployment.

“We are deeply honored to work alongside Stellantis, one of the world’s great mass-market automakers, on this STLA Large-based development car,” said Siyu Huang, CEO of Factorial.

“What we have built together, from cell chemistry to pack architecture to enable real-world road testing, is exactly the kind of deep, full-stack collaboration that solid-state has always required.”

Factorial, which is backed by Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Kia, is among several companies racing to commercialize solid-state batteries. The latest milestone moves its technology beyond cell-level testing and into vehicle validation, a critical stage before potential mass-market adoption.

The United States is working to rebuild its domestic uranium enrichment infrastructure for its defense programs, through a project known as DUECE (Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment).

It began in 2016, with an objective to develop and demonstrate the next generation of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. DUCE is based out of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

The project is strategically significant as it aims to provide a domestic source of highly enriched uranium for powering US nuclear submarines as well as provide tritium for the US nuclear weapons stockpile.

The US imports low enriched uranium for its commercial power reactors but international treaties prohibit the use of imported uranium for military applications.

A capability gap decades in the making

The US once operated three large gaseous diffusion plants for uranium enrichment. These were located in Oak Ridge Tennessee, Portsmouth Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky (which remained operational until 2013).

These facilities consumed enormous amounts of electricity and were gradually shut down as cheaper, more energy-efficient centrifuge-based enrichment became the global standard.

The US was also developing centrifuge technology at Oak Ridge to eventually replace gaseous diffusion. But events like the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, the end of the Cold War, and the decrease in global demand for enriched uranium halted plans for commercializing the gas centrifuge technology.

The enrichment process

Gas centrifuge enrichment works by spinning uranium hexafluoride gas at high speed; the heavier uranium-238 isotope migrates toward the outer wall while the lighter, fissile uranium-235 concentrates near the axis. Cascades of thousands of centrifuges connected in series are required to achieve commercially useful enrichment levels.

In general the enrichment levels of uranium fuel in US nuclear submarines is 93-97%. These enable high power density and long-lived reactor cores. It also facilitates in building more compact naval reactors.

What DUECE is building

Currently the project is focused on building a pilot plant in collaboration with BWX Technologies (BWXT). BWXT built a Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility to support the pilot plant, it commenced operations in January 2026. The plant will use centrifuges based on the ORNL’s Generation 1 centrifuge design. Currently the Generation 1 design is deployed in a laboratory cascade at ORNL.

It commenced operations on June 1, 2026. Additional deployments of the Generation 1 machine at ORNL are planned through the early 2030s to mature the TRL (Technology Readiness Level) of the design in time for the pilot plant deployment.

Michael Whedbee ORNL’s technical project manager for DUECE said “ The DUECE project plans to use the developments in computing and in materials to continue to advance and develop new potential designs and capabilities in the centrifuge arena.”

Eventually the technical and operational learnings from the pilot plant will be utilized in building a follow on commercial scale facility in the 2040s. The DUECE project fits within a broader federal push to secure the nuclear fuel cycle, which includes funding for domestic uranium mining, conversion, enrichment and reprocessing.

Environmental advocates in Pennsylvania are calling for urgent action to address skyrocketing electricity costs that are burdening consumers across the state. The activists have proposed a three-pronged approach to tackle the crisis: requiring energy-intensive facilities like data centers to generate their own power instead of drawing from the public grid, reducing utility company profit margins, and accelerating the connection of new renewable energy projects to the electrical system.

The push comes amid growing concerns about the environmental and economic impact of the state’s rapidly expanding data center industry. These massive facilities, which house thousands of computer servers to support cloud computing and digital services, consume enormous amounts of electricity around the clock. Despite this surge in demand placing additional strain on Pennsylvania’s power infrastructure, industry representatives maintain that data centers are not responsible for the rising costs faced by residential and business customers.

The advocacy coalition, which includes major environmental organizations, argues that current policies unfairly burden ordinary consumers with the costs of supporting large-scale industrial electricity users. By requiring these high-demand facilities to develop their own power sources, advocates believe the pressure on the existing grid would be reduced, potentially leading to lower rates for households and small businesses. Additionally, streamlining the approval process for solar, wind, and other clean energy projects could help diversify the state’s energy portfolio while creating more competitive pricing options for consumers.

The post Pennsylvania Activists Push for Solutions to Rising Electric Bills as Data Centers Strain Power Grid first appeared on EnviroLink Network.

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a method to harvest rare earth elements (REEs) directly from coal waste.

Anuja Tripathi, a postdoctoral researcher, co-developed this innovative method to recover critical rare earth elements from this industrial waste. 

Working alongside professors Ching-Hua Huang and Xing Xie, Tripathi transformed what she once viewed as a childhood nuisance into a valuable resource. It offers a way to extract the essential materials needed for modern technology from America’s massive stockpiles of coal fly ash.

Mining coal waste

Do not let the name fool you. Rare earth elements are not actually rare. But these are deeply scattered. Finding them in concentrations high enough to mine efficiently is a global game of hide-and-seek.

Yet, modern society cannot function without them. These elements are the invisible muscles inside electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, defense weapons systems, and smartphones.

Right now, the United States relies mostly on foreign supply chains to get them. This heavy dependence creates massive geopolitical and national security vulnerabilities. The pressure is on to find a domestic source. 

The solution sits in America’s coal landfills. Right now, about 2 billion tons of fly ash are trapped in storage ponds and dump sites across the nation.

Left alone, it can leak toxic chemicals into groundwater or spill during major storms.

But coal naturally holds trace amounts of REEs. When coal burns, those valuable elements get left behind in the ash, concentrated and waiting.

Mining it, however, is a dirty business. Conventional extraction requires intense heat and toxic, corrosive acids. It often creates more pollution than it solves.

Without toxic acids

Tripathi’s breakthrough eliminates the harsh chemicals.

Her system relies on a recyclable, salt-based “ionic liquid.” This specialized liquid remains stable under conditions that would cause water-based chemistry to break down completely.

“The beauty of this system is that it works beyond the limits of water,” Tripathi explained.

First, the ionic liquid washes over the ash, acting like a magnet to pull the rare earth elements away from the waste. Next, the scientists zap the liquid with an electrical current. The valuable elements instantly gather onto a collection surface, allowing researchers to scrape them off.

The best part is that the liquid is cleaned and reused. The process is also highly tunable.

The team can target specific metals by adjusting the voltage of the electrical current. At low voltages, the system isolates neodymium — a critical ingredient for the ultra-strong permanent magnets used in clean energy. In initial lab tests, the system successfully recovered nearly half of the available neodymium.

The laboratory chemistry is sound. Now comes the hard part: scale.

Tripathi and her team must prove that this system can handle tons of waste rather than small laboratory batches. It needs to be fast and cheap enough to survive in the commercial market.

If it works, the implications stretch far beyond coal. The same electrochemical process could eventually be used to mine discarded cell phones, dead EV batteries, and old medical waste.

The findings were published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. 

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Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have added real-time visual tracking to their nuclear accident simulation equipment. By installing a camera window into a specialized furnace wall, scientists use digital image correlation to measure fuel cladding deformation as it happens. 

This is the first time researchers have captured these physical changes visually during a simulated loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA).

The severe accident testing station (SATS) at ORNL is the only domestic facility that can run these simulated failures on commercial, radioactive fuel rods. The protective outer layer, known as cladding, holds the nuclear fuel. Gathering precise data on this setup helps the nuclear industry reduce regulatory uncertainty.

This testing supports a broader national effort to approve accident-tolerant and high-burnup fuels, which allow commercial reactors to run longer and generate more power without raising costs.

Grid demand and regulatory approvals

Data centers and artificial intelligence systems are increasing the demand for steady electricity. Rather than building new facilities, power companies want to optimize current light-water reactors. This process, called a power uprate, increases electricity output by running fuel at higher temperatures and adjusting operational margins.

“A power uprate means increasing a plant’s electrical output by optimizing its operational margins — and removing overly conservative guidelines where appropriate — so that the fuel can operate at higher power levels,” said Nathan Capps, senior R&D staff in the Fuel Cladding and Core Internals group.

When utilities combine power uprates with extended fuel lifespans, they generate more energy from the same resources. To date, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved 171 power uprates. 

This has added power equivalent to eight new reactors to the U.S. grid without new construction. However, utilities must submit experimental data proving safety before the NRC approves these operational changes.

The simulation process

To replicate an accident where cooling water drops out of a reactor core, ORNL scientists follow a specific sequence. A fuel rod segment between 1 and 12 inches long is placed inside a quartz tube and centered with spacer disks. Next, researchers pressurize the inside of the segment to replicate the internal stress of a full-length active rod. 

An infrared furnace then heats the sample to a target temperature at a controlled rate. Finally, water floods the chamber to cool the segment back to room temperature. The entire process takes two to three minutes.

SATS uses two stations to complete this research. The first operates in a standard lab to map out experiments and test non-radioactive materials. The second station sits inside a heavily shielded hot cell to run identical parameters on radioactive commercial fuel. 

Beyond structural changes, the system tracks how trapped gases escape during temperature spikes and how fuel moves during a failure.

Industry applications

Fuel manufacturers use ORNL’s data to create safety reports for regulatory review. Over the past four years, ORNL has completed 16 LOCA tests alongside companies like Southern Nuclear, Constellation, Westinghouse, Framatome, and Global Nuclear Fuel. 

The laboratory plans to double its testing volume to help utilities meet rising grid demands.

Water is one of the most common substances on Earth, but scientists have now discovered that it may have a surprising new use: storing electrical energy. Researchers at the Hamburg University of Technology in Germany have developed a new type of energy storage device that uses pure water as its main working ingredient. The technology […]

The post Scientists turn ordinary water into a powerful energy storage material appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.

SpaceX alumni Andrew Redd is betting the ocean has vast amounts of untapped geothermal energy.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has officially cleared the preconceptual design and technology development roadmap for Xcimer Energy’s fusion power plant architecture, named Athena.

This regulatory clearance follows an intense evaluation of a 724-page proposal that covered system engineering, safety protocols, economic projections, and environmental impacts.

The government’s sign-off concludes Xcimer’s initial 18-month budget cycle within the federal Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program, an initiative intended to advance commercial fusion through public-private partnerships.

This administrative milestone closely follows the activation of Xcimer’s prototype laser system, Phoenix, last week. Located inside a 74,000-square-foot facility in Denver, Phoenix is currently the largest operational private laser system globally.

“Phoenix is a proof of concept for an unconventional fusion architecture: a krypton fluoride (KrF) excimer laser using Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) to compress a microsecond-long pulse into the nanosecond timescales fusion requires,” said the company in a press release.

Viability of long-term power generation

While historical laboratory efforts, such as those at the National Ignition Facility, proved that laser fusion physics could surpass the scientific breakeven point, Xcimer’s program focuses on the financial and mechanical viability of long-term power generation.

The Athena platform serves as the blueprint for a projected fleet of commercial plants designed to operate continuously for multiple decades.

A central challenge in fusion engineering is protecting reactor structures from degrading under constant radiation. Xcimer intends to address this by using a moving curtain of molten salt inside the reactor chamber instead of a static solid wall.

According to Susana Reyes, Vice President for Chamber and Plant Design, this liquid barrier absorbs neutron flux, generates tritium fuel, and transfers heat while constantly renewing itself.

“We are designing Athena to run continuously at a repetition rate of up to 1 Hz, and the use of a liquid wall chamber maximizes availability by protecting the solid structures from the fusion reaction emissions over the entire plant lifetime,” said Reyes.

Establishing scalable industrial manufacturing

Company officials state that the primary obstacle to fusion energy is no longer validating the underlying science, but establishing scalable industrial manufacturing.

Conner Galloway, CEO and Chief Science Officer, noted that the DOE’s review confirms the mechanical viability of the Athena framework and establishes a structured pathway toward commercial deployment.

“The question facing laser fusion is no longer whether the physics works,” said Galloway. “The question is how fast we can industrialize it.

Xcimer’s engineering targets include limiting laser manufacturing expenses to less than $100 per joule to ensure competitive energy pricing. Following the federal approval of the Athena roadmap, the Denver-based firm plans to transition into its next operational phase.

The upcoming schedule requires Xcimer to begin full-scale subsystem testing, complete engineering validations, and finalize the technical preparations necessary for a comprehensive, integrated pilot plant demonstration.

“We designed Athena around that property from day one, and it shapes everything: the materials choices, the thermal management, the maintenance philosophy, the economics. And Xcimer’s laser architecture uniquely enables this design,” concluded Reyes.

Researchers from the private nuclear fusion energy company Commonwealth Fusion Systems have published a series of papers that they claim confirm that their flagship ARC reactor will produce more usable energy than it consumes if built as designed.

Although the company projects it will deliver the first commercial fusion plants by the early 2030s, other researchers say there are remaining challenges to overcome, and won’t declare the ARC reactor successful until an operational version is constructed to validate the research team’s theoretical predictions.

ARC Fusion Reactor ‘Will Work’ When Built

Scientists have long dreamed of capturing the nuclear fusion reaction that fuels our Sun and using it to generate clean, renewable power. Private fusion firms like CFS have received nearly $10 billion in funding over the last decade alone.

The first laboratory “net-energy” controlled fusion reaction, which fusion scientists call “ignition,” didn’t occur until 2022, when physicists at the US National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, successfully produced more energy than was used to generate the reaction. Although brief, that moment has fueled speculation that practical fusion energy generation may be right around the corner.

Now, the Commonwealth team, which includes 58 researchers from the company and partner institutes, has published scientific papers outlining the physics of their ARC reactor, including new models that they say account for the “expected behavior” of the superhot plasma at the heart of the design.

Brandon Sorbom, the company’s chief science officer, said that the published works  “confirm that when we build the ARC fusion power plant, it will work”.

Company Claims ARC Will Produce 400 Megawatts of Net Electricity

After nearly a decade of research, CFS, founded in 2018, is currently preparing its prototype for a 2027 demonstration it calls ‘SPARC.’ The company said they expect that trial run, which will demonstrate their technology’s ability to generate more energy than it needs to heat the plasma, will help them fine-tune ARC’s final design.

According to the Commonwealth-led team, ARC will generate more energy than is required to operate the entire facility, including plasma heating, resulting in a true net-positive power-generation facility. This includes producing approximately 400 megawatts of net electricity, which the team noted is enough to power 280,000 average US homes. For comparison, recent census data indicates that Boston, Massachusetts, near the company’s headquarters in Cambridge, has around 271,000 U.S. homes.

Like SPARC, the ARC reactor uses high-temperature superconducting magnets to compress the plasma, which remains suspended by the magnetic fields, preventing it from damaging the chamber walls and terminating any potential fusion reaction. Under this extreme pressure, the nuclei of heavy hydrogen trapped inside the chamber fuse to form helium, the same reaction that takes place inside the Sun.

This fusion reaction results in the release of energy, primarily high-speed neutrons. At its hottest, the donut-shaped ring of plasma reaches seven times the temperature of the Sun.

Critics Applaud Publication While Highlighting Unproven Concepts and Systems

Tony Roulstone, a nuclear engineer at the University of Cambridge, UK, conceded that the CFS team and its collaborating authors are “some of the best in the fusion business” and noted the company’s ARC reactor concept is the result of “good work over many years.” However, Roulstone also warned of the pressure on researchers in privately funded companies to “claim things before the evidence is fully in place.”

David Hammer, a nuclear engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said it is a good sign that the team is publishing at a high volume, but also warned that published papers will not guarantee that the built device will work as intended.

Their modeling “has to be proven correct by a fusion reactor that works as designed”, he adds. If the firm can get SPARC operating successfully next year, “it will be an important step forward”, he says.

Hamner also noted that several of the design’s subsystems require further development before it can be declared complete. This includes addressing how plasma will behave in the real world when it becomes unstable versus its modeled behavior, proving out the process for extracting usable energy from the generated heat, and demonstrating that the reactor is robust enough to operate for long periods.

The scientists also noted the challenges in sourcing tritium, the isotopic fuel the reactor requires to operate. Although CFS has outlined its tritium generation process, Hamner noted that the series of published papers neither details the process nor demonstrates its viability.

“There are candidate blanket materials and blanket designs, but there are many engineering person-years needed” to bring a functional ARC-style plant to fruition, he explained.

“We certainly have to build more on top of that foundation laid out in these papers,” a company spokesperson said, adding that they will “be able to produce tritium for operations and for future power plants.”

The following articles were published by the CFS-led team: “Overview of the physics basis for the ARC fusion power plant“; “ARC disruption physics and strategy“; “Performance and Transport in the ARC Tokamak“; “Power and particle exhaust for the ARC fusion power plant“; “ARC Physics Basis-Magnetohydrodynamics.”

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to correct a previous version that described neutrinos, rather than fast-neutrons, in the context of the reporting, and to clarify that the first achievement of a “net-energy” controlled fusion reaction (ignition) occurred in 2022. 

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

US energy storage startup Peak Energy has recently joined forces with leading car manufacturer General Motors (GM) to develop sodium-ion batteries designed for grid storage.

The Colorado-based energy storage company announced the new partnership on June 9. The project will bring together its proprietary passively cooled battery and GM’s sodium-ion cells.

Under the novel agreement, General Motors will design and develop the sodium-ion cells at its battery laboratories in the state of Michigan. It will moreover retain exclusive manufacturing rights. Peak Energy will integrate the cells into its energy storage systems.

“In grid-scale stationary storage systems, if we can make the cell safer and more robust, we can remove complexity elsewhere in the system,” GM reported. “That can translate into a quieter, simpler, lower-maintenance ESS for the customer.”

Sodium-ion storage push

According to both companies, the technology could provide a cheap alternative to today’s dominant lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery systems. It could also improve reliability and reduce energy waste.

“Lowering the cost of energy is one of the most important issues facing America today,” Landon Mossburg, Peak Energy CEO and co-founder, said. He added that the firm aims to deliver a safer, lower-cost, and faster-to-deploy energy storage system that can meet the growing US power demand without raising consumer costs.

Peak Energy has developed a proprietary passively cooled battery energy storage system. In essence, this means that it does not rely on active cooling to maintain safe operating temperatures. The firm argued that eliminating cooling equipment reduces both upfront costs and operational complexity.

The sodium-ion system can reportedly reduce energy storage costs by around 20 percent compared with conventional solutions. It can furthermore deliver over 99 percent uptime.

Mossburg stressed the significance of the project. “The future of grid storage will be defined by affordability, reliability and American innovation,” he noted. “We’re thrilled to partner with GM to bring a better solution to the American energy economy.”

A strategic partnership

Replacing conventional LFP-based storage systems with Peak Energy’s passively cooled technology could potentially cut annual battery storage energy waste in the US by up to two terawatt-hours (TWh). That amount of electricity would be enough to power a mid-sized city for an entire year.

“At GM, we know that the application should determine the battery, and for grid-scale stationary storage, sodium-ion is the right solution,” Kurt Kelty, GM’s VP of battery and sustainability, said in a press statement.

According to GM, eliminating active cooling can significantly improve energy storage systems. Active cooling relies on additional equipment, leads to higher energy losses, requires more maintenance, and increases the risk of component failures. All of this can drive costs higher over time. The firm is certain that Peak Energy’s platform will deliver lower costs, greater reliability, and less maintenance.

“Peak is already demonstrating the value of sodium-ion through their innovative energy storage platform, and together we’re working to push those benefits even further with our next-generation cell – helping deliver more reliable, lower-cost energy storage at scale for the US grid,” Kelty concluded.

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A new study has taken a fresh look at a late 2025 Yonsei University study claiming the universe’s expansion is stalling out and instead has found that the universe is still expanding as previously believed.

Led by researchers from the University of Southampton, the team behind the new analysis acknowledged the scientific value of the 2025 team’s work, noting that their calculations were not wrong but lacked the additional data needed to confirm the universe’s expansion rather than refute it.

The lead author of the 2025 study, Dr. Chul Chung, told The Debrief that he and his colleagues “have already submitted our response to Wiseman, Riess et al. 2026 on May 14,” adding that the paper, “Still accelerating: age bias correction in supernova cosmology is robust to host-progenitor age mapping,” has also been posted on arXiv.

“The abstract summarizes the two main issues we identify in Wiseman et al., so I think it provides a concise overview of our position,” Chung told The Debrief.

Challenging Universal Expansion

According to a statement announcing the findings, scientists first confirmed the universe’s expansion was accelerating in 2011, a discovery that won astrophysicists Professor Adam Riess and Professor Brian Schmidt the Nobel Prize in Physics. Since that discovery, cosmological models have incorporated this accelerating expansion, with experiments on dark matter and dark energy attempting to explain it.

Then last year, a separate team of astronomers announced that a new analysis of stellar phenomena indicated that the universe was no longer expanding. Adding to the controversy was the team’s claim that dark energy may not exist, citing the lack of concrete evidence for a universe undergoing accelerating expansion.

According to the Southampton-led team behind the new study, the 2025 study suggested that previous methods used to measure the universe’s expansion, such as measuring supernovae, “were fundamentally flawed.”

“This points to a time-varying dark energy and a universe that is no longer accelerating, representing a potential paradigm shift in cosmology if confirmed,” explained Professor Chul Chung, co-lead author on the study, in a 2025 email to The Debrief.

The claims sent shockwaves through the scientific community, a result that the researchers note could have dismantled the Nobel Prize-winning team’s historic findings, and “nearly three decades of astronomical progress.”

When discussing the 2025 team’s work, the lead author of the new study, Dr Phil Wiseman, said the team’s findings and the resulting debate were not necessarily incorrect. Instead, the Southampton researcher said it was primarily a result of a scientific understanding.

“The previous and well-accepted measurements were, in fact, fine and our current understanding of the fate of the universe remains robust.”

Recalculating Galaxy Masses and White Dwarf Star Ages Reestablishes Expansion

In their reanalysis, the Southampton-led team recalibrated the original data to account for variables not in the original study. According to Wiseman, these included “different host environments and populations.”

For example, the research team looked at Type 1a supernovae, which are violet, extremely bright explosions of white dwarf stars. The authors of the 2025 study claimed that this class of supernova had “different maximum brightness,” which had tricked astronomers into thinking the cosmos was accelerating, when their analysis said it was actually slowing down.

When they took a fresh look at the data, the Southampton team found that they had incorrectly estimated the age of these stars. The new study also says the 2025 team didn’t account for the mass of the galaxies hosting these cosmological phenomena, which they described as “a standard correction used in modern cosmology to prove accuracy.”

When his team factored those data points in, Wiseman said the evidence for a stalling expansion was not supported. Instead, the researcher observed that “the evidence for cosmic acceleration remains remarkably consistent.”

In their reply on ArXiv, the Yonsei University team said the new research failed to factor in two variables of their own, adding that “when these two effects are consistently combined in computing the redshift-dependent magnitude correction, the final correction, and hence the resulting cosmological impact, remain largely unchanged,” from the original 2025 calculations.

“Extraordinary Claims Require Especially Careful Testing”

When discussing the new study’s findings, Southampton Professor Mark Sullivan highlighted the benefits of scientific review, noting that “this is how progress is made.”

“Although this idea did not turn out correct, it has opened up new ways of thinking about how supernovae explode and how we can measure dark energy more accurately,” the researcher added.

Paper co-author, Dr Brodie Popovic agreed, noting that the 2025 study provided astronomers a good opportunity to “go back over all of our assumptions,” adding that “it turns out, yes, we do understand this stuff, and we’re accounting for it in our cosmology measurement.”

In a salute to the Sagan Standard established by astronomer Carl Sagan, which says “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” Reiss seemed to celebrate the new findings that reestablish his original work by quipping that “extraordinary claims require especially careful testing.”

With the accelerating expansion of the universe seemingly reestablished, at least for now, Dr Wiseman said: “we can get back to trying to understand what dark energy actually is, rather than wondering if it exists at all.”

“Thankfully we have averted this crisis, but the mystery about why the universe is still accelerating in size remains,” he added. 

The study “Still Accelerating: Type Ia supernova cosmology is robust to host galaxy age evolution” was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

Mexico is entering a pivotal moment for its energy system and economy more broadly. Power-sector reforms, shifting oil and gas trade flows, US-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiations and industrial competitiveness are converging to reshape the country’s investment landscape.

Lithium is essential to the modern world, but its extraction has always carried a heavy environmental toll.

A research team from Monash University has patented a new technology that extracts lithium from solid salt mixtures rather than liquid brines. This method provides a faster, highly efficient, and eco-friendly alternative to standard lithium extraction. The process works by shifting the focus from liquid brine to a dried, solid salt crust. Interestingly, it achieved a lithium recovery of around 95 percent.

“This work shows that lithium can be efficiently separated from complex salt mixtures using simple organic solvents, without relying on freshwater or highly chemical-intensive processes,” said Dr. Zhikao Li, one of the study authors. 

No freshwater needed

The global transition to green energy depends on lithium recovered from salt-lake brines, yet the current methods used to harvest it are plagued by critical inefficiencies. 

Standard extraction processes are painfully slow, often requiring up to two years for brine to evaporate in massive desert ponds, all while recovering less than half of the available lithium. 

Newer, faster technologies, such as Direct Lithium Extraction, aim to shorten this timeline. However, these introduce a severe environmental tradeoff by consuming unsustainable volumes of scarce freshwater in the world’s absolute driest regions.

This combination of low recovery rates, prolonged processing delays, and high water demand creates a massive issue for a global supply chain under pressure to scale sustainably.

Rather than pulling lithium from liquid brine, this new approach works backward by targeting the solid salt crust left behind.

Once the brine has dried, engineers wash the resulting salt mixture with common industrial solvents such as ethanol and acetone. 

As lithium dissolves incredibly well in these organic liquids while other coexisting salts do not, the solvents act like a precise chemical magnet and slide the lithium away from impurities. This clever use of differential solubility allows for an exceptionally clean separation, completely eliminating the industry’s reliance on massive freshwater inputs.

Removing impurities

To make the system fully sustainable, the researchers paired the solvent wash with advanced “interfacial solar evaporation” technology. 

Using only natural sunlight, the system traps heat at the surface of the liquid. This accelerates the extraction process and recovers the solvent in its pure form. The team successfully recovered and recycled more than 99% of the ethanol and acetone used.

In addition to saving water, the method also removes boron and sulfate impurities. Typically, these stubborn minerals cling to lithium matrices, requiring complex, chemical-heavy refinement stages to filter them out.

Battery-grade material becomes much easier to produce because this new method naturally rejects contaminants during the initial solvent wash. This yields exceptionally high-purity lithium right from the start and streamlines the entire manufacturing pipeline.

Recognizing its commercial potential, the research team has filed a patent application for this breakthrough technology. 

The process achieves both high extraction rates and near-total solvent recycling, maximizing performance while reducing the ecological footprint of lithium harvesting.

The findings were published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

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Across the stories today, a common thread emerges: conservation is working, but the planet isn’t waiting for us to catch up. From Kent’s butterfly meadows to Cambodia’s tiger corridors, dedicated efforts are bringing species back from the brink — yet climate disasters are simultaneously accelerating faster than anyone predicted.

The Duke of Burgundy butterfly’s 90-fold population surge in Kent represents the kind of conservation victory that reminds us what’s possible with focused effort and patience. Similarly, Kyrgyzstan’s massive wildlife corridor for snow leopards and Cambodia’s ambitious tiger reintroduction program signal that countries are thinking beyond traditional protected areas toward landscape-scale solutions. These aren’t just feel-good stories — they’re blueprints for how targeted conservation can reverse seemingly impossible odds.

But the day’s coverage points to growing momentum around an uncomfortable truth: even our biggest successes are racing against accelerating climate impacts. In Indonesia, extreme rainfall killed 58 of the world’s rarest orangutans in just four days — a 7% population loss that no conservation program can quickly replace. Meanwhile, Antarctica recorded winter temperatures above 15°C, shattering records and leaving scientists describing conditions as “very strange.”

Behind the numbers are real communities adapting in real time. Indonesian fishers are turning to mangrove restoration and crab farming as traditional catches dwindle. Coffee farmers worldwide are rediscovering forgotten species as familiar varieties fail under changing conditions. In the Cotswolds, citizen scientists are filling gaps left by overstretched agencies, uncovering “worrying” pollution levels in rivers that official monitoring might have missed.

The tension between protection and development threads through multiple stories today. Property developers argue that new environmental regulations will drive up housing costs, while environmental groups fight to prevent SpaceX from acquiring wildlife refuge land in Texas. In Ethiopia, successful conservation efforts are preserving nature but may be undermining local food security — a reminder that progress and pressure often arrive together.

Perhaps most revealing is how different institutions are responding to crisis. While the U.S. weakens marine protections domestically, it’s actively policing illegal fishing internationally. Kenya becomes the first African nation to receive UN climate disaster compensation, while proposed federal budget cuts threaten to eliminate Great Lakes monitoring programs. China’s Belt and Road Initiative generates massive emissions through steel-heavy construction, even as solar power surpasses coal in the U.S. for the first time in history.

The enforcement stories offer a different kind of hope. South Africa sentenced two pangolin traffickers to eight years in prison — a serious consequence in a field often marked by weak penalties. Durham’s chemical company faces state lawsuits for decades of toxic contamination, while an 80-year-old Texas shrimper traveled 8,000 miles to Taiwan to confront a petrochemical giant at their shareholder meeting.

What emerges is a picture of environmental action happening at every scale — from butterfly meadows to international courts — but also of systems under unprecedented stress. As extreme weather kills endangered species faster than breeding programs can replace them, and as climate displacement intensifies while immigration laws offer no protection, the question isn’t whether we can solve individual problems. It’s whether we can solve them fast enough, and at the scale the planet now demands.

The post Environmental News Roundup: Rare Duke of Burgundy Butterfly Population Soars 90-Fold in Kent Conservation Success first appeared on EnviroLink Network.

China has completed its largest offshore project, which combines solar power, hydrogen production, and energy storage. This marks a big step in the country’s efforts to create more reliable renewable energy systems. The project, off the coast of Rudong in East China’s Jiangsu Province, was reported as completed on Wednesday, according to China Media Group.

Funded by CHN Energy Guohua Energy Investment Co., the facility is described as China’s largest offshore solar demonstration project that combines solar power, hydrogen production, and energy storage.

Massive offshore facility combines multiple energy technologies

The Rudong project features 400,000 kilowatts (400 MW) of solar capacity and a new 220-kilovolt onshore booster station. It also includes a hydrogen production station capable of producing 1,500 standard cubic meters of hydrogen per hour, along with an electrochemical energy storage station.

According to Chinese media reports, this is the first project in China to combine power generation, hydrogen production, energy storage, full energy use, and coastal ecological management in one development.

The facility has been designed around what officials describe as an integrated “electricity-storage-hydrogen” model. Solar power made offshore can go to the grid, be stored in batteries, or be used to make hydrogen from water. This setup lets energy be used in different ways based on demand and conditions.

The project is built on coastal tidal flats, which are often considered suitable sites for large renewable energy projects. It also uses advanced solar technology and smart control systems to improve energy conversion and management.

China's largest integrated PV-hydrogen-storage project has completed construction in east China's Jiangsu Province. The project, with a total photovoltaic capacity of 400,000 kW, includes a newly built 220 kV onshore booster station, a hydrogen production facility with a… pic.twitter.com/gd2KuSPBkA

— People's Daily, China (@PDChina) June 10, 2026

Green hydrogen plays a central role

One important feature of the project is that it can make green hydrogen using electricity from renewable sources. By using solar power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, the facility can store energy as hydrogen for later use.

The Nantong Daily reported earlier this year that the solar power station achieved full-capacity grid connection on April 29, 2025. When the whole project is running, the energy storage station will be able to supply 120,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity during peak demand each day.

Meanwhile, the hydrogen production facility is expected to generate up to 180 tons of green hydrogen each year. This hydrogen can be used by nearby industries, such as chemical manufacturing and transportation, that are looking for cleaner fuel options.

Officials say the finished solar, hydrogen, and storage facilities will operate as a closed-loop energy system covering generation, storage, use, and backup.

Experts highlight stability advantages

Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, said that adding hydrogen and storage technologies can help address the problem of solar power’s volatility. He said the project shows that renewable energy is moving beyond just adding more power generation.

“Its completion marks a further step forward for China in the field of new-energy multi-energy complementarity,” he stated. He added that the project is now focused on energy conversion efficiency, integrating different energy sources, and making the system more stable, rather than just increasing capacity.

He also said that coastal regions often have strong wind and solar resources but still face inconsistent energy supply.

China scales up renewable hydrogen production

This project comes as China is rapidly expanding hydrogen production from renewable energy across the country. The National Energy Administration says the industry is moving from pilot projects to large-scale commercial use.

As of the end of March, completed and ongoing renewable hydrogen projects in China had a total production capacity of over 1 million tons per year. More than 250,000 tons per year are already in operation, which is more than double the capacity at the end of 2024. Projects under construction will add over 900,000 tons of annual capacity.

Lin noted that the long-term value of projects like Rudong will depend on reducing development costs and improving the efficiency of hydrogen production. Still, the new facility is one of the best examples to date of how solar power, energy storage, and hydrogen production can work together in a large-scale clean energy system.

A battle is brewing over who has undue influence on America’s federal judiciary as climate litigation intensifies across the country. Cities and states are pursuing billions of dollars in damages from major oil companies, alleging these corporations deliberately concealed the environmental dangers of their products for decades.

In response to this wave of lawsuits, conservative organizations have launched accusations that environmental lawyers are working with legal education nonprofits to bias federal judges against the fossil fuel industry. However, climate attorneys are firing back with evidence that the opposite is true – that oil and gas companies are the ones actively trying to sway judicial opinion in their favor.

The most compelling evidence centers on judicial education seminars hosted by fossil fuel-backed organizations. These events have featured prominent pro-industry speakers, including current Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who participated when he was still serving as a fracking industry executive. Such seminars raise questions about whether judges are receiving balanced information about climate science and the environmental impacts of fossil fuel extraction.

This controversy highlights the high stakes surrounding climate litigation, as courts increasingly become battlegrounds for determining corporate responsibility for environmental damage. With billions of dollars and the future of climate policy hanging in the balance, both sides are fighting not just legal cases, but for the hearts and minds of the judges who will ultimately decide them.

The post Fossil Fuel Industry Accused of Influencing Federal Judges Through Educational Seminars first appeared on EnviroLink Network.

Solar supplied 12.8% of US electricity in May even as Trump boosts coal over clean energy

Even as Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the US and remains the leading source of new power.

Data released on Wednesday by the global energy thinktank Ember, along with a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (Seia) and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%, Ember said. Coal supplied 12.2%, its fourth-lowest monthly share ever.

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© Photograph: Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images

© Photograph: Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images

© Photograph: Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images

As the midterm elections approach, many leading Democrats are rethinking their approach to climate change.

As the midterm elections approach, many leading Democrats are rethinking their approach to climate change.

© Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Industrial-scale mining in Africa to support global supply chains is leading to unprecedented deforestation across the continent, with