In autumn 2024, Russia launched massive aerial assaults on Ukraine, pounding its energy system and raising fears about the safety of its nuclear power plants. Several reactors disconnected from the grid. One shut down entirely.

“It wasn’t that we were scared,” says Shaun Burnie, recalling that night. “It was that we were terrified.”

For Greenpeace veteran nuclear specialist Burnie, who has worked in some of the most radioactive places on earth, the danger lay in what could have followed.

Nuclear plants rely on a constant external power supply to run cooling systems for the reactor core and spent fuel. If the grid buckles and plants disconnect, they switch to diesel generators.

In a worst-case scenario, if they can’t reconnect, cooling systems fail and reactors overheat. Ukraine knows what that means. On April 26 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands from the area and contaminating large parts of Europe.

“Chernobyl is part of our collective memory. Everyone has family or community stories about it,” says Lena Kondratiuk, a 25-year-old from Rivne in western Ukraine. “And now, during the war, this meaning has become even more real.”

The lasting legacy of Chernobyl

A system under pressure

Though Ukraine still depends on nuclear energy for more than half of its electricity and plans to build more reactors, the worst-case scenario hasn’t happened. But the threat remains as Russia continues to target energy infrastructure.

More than half of Ukraine’s power generation capacity has been damaged or destroyed. UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has called the situation “the world’s biggest threat to nuclear safety.” 

Because large, centralized plants — nuclear, coal, or gas — that generate huge amounts of electricity in one place are such easy targets, decentralization is an attractive idea.

And that also means more renewable energy, which is harder to target, cheaper to fix, and faster to deploy.

Chris Alyett, an energy specialist at UK think tank Chatham House said that while a single missile can take out a 250-megawatt coal plant, it would require 40 to destroy the same capacity in wind generation. Solar parks are also more resistant.

“If there is damage to that, it doesn’t necessarily need to take everything out — you could swap new panels in,” Aylett said.

These benefits are driving Ukrainian energy companies and NGOs to push renewables. Rooftop solar now covers hospitals, schools, and public buildings. In 2025, the country installed enough to power over a million homes, all while under fire.

Keeping the lights on with renewables

Lena Kondratiuk is part of that effort. She joined the NGO Ecoclub as a volunteer at 18, before taking on a job as renewables analyst there in 2020. After Russia’s full-scale invasion, the organization shifted from advocacy worked and launched the Solar Aid for Ukraine campaign, as power outages became a part of daily life.

At 21, she began managing projects. At first, she was daunted by the responsibility but agreed to it “because of the war, because I understand that, for example, I can die tomorrow.”

Like many Ukrainians she has learned to adapt. Her work now takes her all over the country, including south to Mykolaiv, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the front line. On her first trip to the city, it was being shelled and running on diesel generators.

“I didn’t want to come back to the city because I’m scared,” she says.

Now Kondraktiuk makes the 13-hour trip around once a month, even as Russia targets passenger trains. She loves it there because of the people. “They teach that even during such a war time it’s still possible to find happy moments in your life and continue it.”

Renewable energy as survival

Despite the risks, Kondratiuk has helped bring nearly 90 solar systems online. In places like Mykolaiv, these systems are more than green energy, they are lifelines.

“Renewable energy in Ukraine is not about the climate and sustainability; it’s about surviving now,” says Kondratiuk. “It’s about the access to basic needs.”

These solar and battery systems keep water utilities running during blackouts. They also enable hospitals to operate and children to charge their phones during outages so they can keep in touch with their parents.

One project she worked on installed solar panels at a care home for women with mental health and neurological conditions. Before the installation, staff woke at 4am to try and prepare meals ahead of power cuts, but the patients often went without warm food.

“And after that they were happy because they have like access to everything,” she says.

Lessons learned from Ukraine

The priority for Ukrainians is to keep power flowing. Nuclear has been essential to that, and without it, experts say Ukraine would be in a far worse position given how much fossil fuel capacity has been destroyed during the war. The country still needs baseload power.

Chris Aylett has been looking at what other countries in Europe can learn from Ukraine’s experience of running an energy grid under constant attack.

“They’ve gone through this terrible experience, they’re continuing to go through it, they’ve shown amazing sort of ingenuity at rebuilding fast and it’s told us a lot about what’s vulnerable and what you need to consider,” he says.

The hidden cost of nuclear power

The main lesson is the geographical spread of infrastructure — and that applies regardless of energy source. Diversifying the mix, with more renewables and storage, is another. As is stockpiling the right components that keep a system running — and standardizing them, so restoration takes weeks rather than months.

Alyett says the war, and the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, have further made the case for rapid decarbonization and renewables in “fossil-fuel poor” Europe, alongside “tackling climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

On nuclear’s future, he is pragmatic, saying that in countries such as France, where it is a major energy source, he sees no reason for that to stop. “Ultimately you just want to build out as much low carbon as you can, and make it as secure as you can while you’re doing it.”

Kondratiuk says she’s glad she was born long after Chernobyl — even as she lives through a different kind of disaster in Ukraine, one she doesn’t expect to end soon. But she’s still looking to a time when the war is over.

“I still want to help my country, still want to continue my work at the Ecoclub and I still think that even after the war and after our victory there would be even more work compared to now because we have to rebuild the country and rebuild it in greener and better way,” she says.

Edited by: Tamsin Walker

This story was adapted from an episode of DW’s Living Planet podcast.