Adaptive Transformation of Ukraine’s Energy Sector: from Vulnerability to Strategic Ad-vantage

F. Korobeynikov, V. Mokhor

https://doi.org/10.15407/elmodel.48.04.047

Èlektron. model. 2026, 48(4):47-89

ABSTRACT

The current discourse on the post-war reconfiguration of Ukraine’s energy system unfolds predominantly in technological and economic registers, leaving aside the higher-order question of the role of energy architecture in the system of state development. Yet it is at this level that it is decided whether the state will acquire strategic agency or become entrenched in the position of a dependent recipient of external technological solutions. This article proposes an analytical framework that enables Ukraine’s future energy architecture to be reconceived not as an engineering optimum, but as a strategic choice concerning the form of statehood under conditions of radical uncertainty.

The proposed strategy for the development of the Ukrainian energy sector draws on the authors’ theory of adaptive security, which identifies three regimes of behaviour exhibited by complex socio-technical systems in response to a crisis: robustness, which protects the existing functionality; resilience, which restores what has been lost; and transmorphance, which constitutes the system’s ontological becoming, generating new possibilities and driving evolutionary transformation.

On the basis of this theory, the work provides the rationale for a specific composition of technologies-renewable energy sources (RES), small modular reactors (SMR), and accelerator-driven subcritical systems (ADS), in combination with the existing nuclear and hydroelectric base-as the optimal configuration capable of addressing the main structural challenges of Ukraine’s energy system. A fundamentally important element of this composition is the systematic introduction of accelerator-driven subcritical systems into Ukraine’s strategic discourse. These systems combine an energy-generating function with the capacity for the transmutation of accumulated spent nuclear fuel, opening for Ukraine the position of a co-author rather than a recipient in the emerging nuclear technological ecosystem. Analysis of technological maturity, alongside the regulatory, financial, and institutional conditions of implementation, demonstrates that Ukraine’s energy heritage, under conditions of transmorphic redesign, may become a resource of strategic advantage.

The work makes a twofold contribution: in the methodological dimension, it proposes a new analytical framework for the evaluation of critical infrastructure through the triad of robustness, resilience, and transmorphance; in the strategic dimension, it establishes a specific energy composition as the material form of adaptive security for the Ukrainian state.

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KEYWORDS

adaptive security, Ukraine’s energy system, robustness, resilience, transmorphance, inherent safety, accelerator-driven subcritical systems (ADS), HILP risks, transmutation of spent nuclear fuel.

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Received 24.06.2026