U.S. Support for Ukraine’s Post-War Energy Grid

By Luiza Ilie
BUCHAREST (Reuters) – The United States is collaborating with Ukraine on a roadmap for its post-war energy grid, incorporating safe nuclear power technologies and renewable energy sources, stated U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday.

Ukraine has endured a loss of half its generating capacity due to Russian assaults on its power plants, resulting in persistent shortages and widespread blackouts.

“Right now, they are under assault and we have to help get them through this period of time, we’ve got to harden their existing assets,” Granholm told Reuters during an interview at the annual Transatlantic Energy and Climate Cooperation (P-TECC) conference in Bucharest.

“But … we are planning with them for what the Ukrainian grid of the future looks like,” she continued.
“So it might involve micro-reactors. It might involve SMRs. It definitely will involve distributed generation of solar and wind coupled with batteries. So that work is being done now.”

Granholm mentioned that new nuclear capacity could play a role in the future grid if it is designed securely. Ukraine currently operates nine nuclear reactors at three plants that provide over 55% of its electricity needs, but Kyiv aims to expand this sector to compensate for the loss of six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, which were seized by Russia shortly after its invasion in 2022.

In January, Ukraine’s energy ministry projected that construction work on four new nuclear reactors at the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant could begin in summer or autumn.
Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear power firm Energoatom has also entered an agreement with Westinghouse to build additional reactors.

“We have an agreement to look at the deployment of nine AP1000s in the country,” remarked Westinghouse corporate affairs vice-president Margaret Cosentino during the P-TECC conference. “Obviously, we are not breaking ground at this point in time, but … we have been working closely with them to look at Khmelnytskyi 5 and to start considering what we can do now to position shovel-ready projects for as soon as the war is over.”