In the autumn of 2024 Russia mounted heavy aerial attacks on Ukraine, striking the country’s energy infrastructure and prompting urgent fears about the safety of nuclear reactors. Several units were forced off the grid and one reactor was shut down entirely.
“It wasn’t that we were scared,” recalled Shaun Burnie, a veteran nuclear specialist with Greenpeace. “It was that we were terrified.” Burnie, who has worked in some of the most radioactive places on Earth, said his fear was that a loss of external power would prevent cooling systems from protecting reactor cores and spent fuel.
Nuclear stations rely on a steady external power supply to run coolant systems. When grid connections fail, plants switch to diesel generators; if those backups fail or cannot be reconnected, cooling can stop and reactors can overheat. That danger is vivid in Ukraine because of Chernobyl’s legacy. “Chernobyl is part of our collective memory. Everyone has family or community stories about it,” said Lena Kondratiuk, 25, from Rivne. “And now, during the war, this meaning has become even more real.”
The conflict has damaged or destroyed more than half of Ukraine’s power generation capacity. The International Atomic Energy Agency called the situation “the world’s biggest threat to nuclear safety.” Large, centralized power plants — whether nuclear, coal, or gas — produce a lot of electricity in one place, making them attractive and vulnerable targets. That vulnerability has pushed policymakers, companies and communities toward decentralization and renewables, which are harder to neutralize, cheaper and quicker to repair.
Chris Aylett, an energy analyst at Chatham House, points to the resiliency advantage of spreading generation: a single missile can wipe out a 250-megawatt coal station, but it would take many more strikes to destroy the same capacity if it were distributed across wind turbines. Solar arrays offer similar benefits. “If there is damage to that, it doesn’t necessarily need to take everything out — you could swap new panels in,” he said.
Those practical reasons have driven a rapid expansion of renewables in Ukraine. Rooftop solar is now powering hospitals, schools and public services. In 2025 Ukraine added enough solar capacity to supply electricity to more than a million homes, all while under attack.
Kondratiuk joined the environment NGO Ecoclub at 18 and became a renewables analyst in 2020. After the full-scale invasion in 2022, Ecoclub shifted from campaigning to hands-on work, launching the Solar Aid for Ukraine initiative as outages became frequent. “I can die tomorrow,” she said bluntly — a reality that motivates her urgency.
Her work has taken her across the country, including to Mykolaiv, about 60 kilometres from the front line. On her first visit the city was being shelled and running on diesel generators; today she makes the trip about once a month despite ongoing danger, impressed by local resilience. “They teach that even during wartime, it’s still possible to find happy moments in your life and continue it,” she said.
Kondratiuk has helped install nearly 90 solar systems. In places such as Mykolaiv these installations are lifelines rather than climate projects: hybrid solar-and-battery systems keep water utilities operating during blackouts, allow hospitals to stay functional and give children a way to charge phones so they can contact family. One project added panels to a care home for women with mental-health and neurological conditions; before, staff woke at 4 a.m. to cook ahead of power cuts and residents often missed warm meals. After the solar installation, services improved and residents were better cared for.
Ukraine’s experience underlines clear lessons for energy planning in conflict zones. Keeping electricity flowing is the immediate priority. Nuclear power has been crucial for baseload supply, and the loss of its output would have made an already dire situation worse given how much fossil-fuel capacity has been knocked out. But decentralizing infrastructure, diversifying toward renewables coupled with storage, and stockpiling and standardizing key components can speed repairs and improve resilience when systems are under attack.
Aylett says Europe’s recent shocks — from the war in Ukraine to tensions in maritime chokepoints — strengthen the argument for faster decarbonization and a quicker rollout of renewables, especially in regions that rely on imported fossil fuels. He is pragmatic about nuclear: in countries where it already supplies a large share of electricity, such as France, it will likely remain part of the mix while low-carbon capacity is expanded and security is reinforced.
Kondratiuk, who was born long after Chernobyl, is living through a different catastrophe now but is focused on the future. She intends to keep working with Ecoclub to help rebuild Ukraine — hoping that reconstruction will be not just restorative but greener and more resilient.
Adapted from an episode of DW’s Living Planet podcast.