NEWS RELEASES

DOE Funded News

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 20-Oct-2026 09:17 ET (20-Oct-2026 13:17 GMT/UTC)

Metals’ atomic arrangement can create ‘corrosion highways’ in nuclear reactors

Penn State
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Using computer simulations, a team led by engineers at Penn State found that adjusting subtle atomic arrangements — even in identical baseline chemical compositions — can affect the metal corrosion rate and extent caused by the extreme chemical environment in advanced nuclear reactors can start to corrode the metals comprising the reactor.

Journal: Corrosion Science

Researchers targeting drought-tolerance traits in crops

Colorado State University

Drought is a persistent issue in agriculture, so Colorado State University continually works to identify and develop drought-tolerance traits in crops to ensure farmers can remain competitive and provide food for people and livestock.

Funder: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Einstein’s relativity rules chemical bonds in heavy elements, new research shows

Brown University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers have shown the first direct experimental evidence that the textbook triple bond structure breaks down in heavy elements, where relativity makes the rules.

Journal: Science

ORNL earns five DOE Transportation Technologies Office awards

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers earned five of nine awards presented by DOE’s Transportation Technologies Office during its 2026 Annual Merit Review, held in Arlington, Virginia.

Could geoengineering work to tamp down super El Niños?

University of California - San Diego
Peer-Reviewed Publication

With an anticipated “super” El Niño looming, a new study led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography considers whether society could use a weather-altering technique as a tool to mitigate the floods, extreme heat and other events that El Niño would bring.

Journal: Science Advances
Funder: NSF NCAR Early Career Faculty Innovator, National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Making the ‘invisible’ visible: How high-speed movies could change the way scientists study disease

Texas A&M University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

High-speed movies of microscopic worms may sound like a dull night at the cinema, but this advanced imaging capability could help scientists better understand how diseases begin and progress, track subtle changes in cells and study how the body responds to treatments.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China, NSF of Shandong Province, Taishan Scholars Foundation of Shandong Province, Welch Foundation

Operations workforce powers ORNL’s autonomous science future

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Behind every self-driving laboratory at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a team people most never see. Facilities and Operations workers are building and maintaining the infrastructure that makes autonomous science possible. More than a dozen self-driving labs operate at ORNL, placing the Tennessee national lab among the first research institutions in the world to create this autonomous laboratory model at scale.

Action! NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory begins capturing the greatest cosmic movie ever made

Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)

The wait is over: NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, is now capturing the cosmos in unprecedented detail, transforming the way we study the dynamic Universe.

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