Lessons from Ukraine’s Energy Front: A Conversation with Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, former CEO of Ukraine’s grid operator

One of the main targets of Russian military assault on Ukraine has been its energy grid. This included massive consecutive missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s energy transmission and generation infrastructure, cyberattacks, and the takeover and occupation of Ukraine’s (and Europe’s) largest nuclear power plant at Zaporizhia. A particular feature of Ukraine’s energy system is that it is highly nuclearized, with over half of Ukrainian electricity generation comes from nuclear power plants. What are the vulnerabilities of national energy systems in a full-scale armed conflict? How are these different for states that rely on nuclear power generation? What are the lessons from Ukraine for mitigating these risks? And what are the prospects for nuclear power development in the future, based on the lessons from Ukraine?