Lars van Dassen: «I hope that WINS will always partner the good forces in the world, and a good force in the world right now is Ukraine»

Few could have imagined that one day nuclear power plants would be occupied and become part of an active war zone. However, this is a reality for Ukraine. The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, Zaporizhzhia NPP, and dozens of strategic facilities are under threat. Ukraine not only resists aggression but also has to set new standards for the protection of nuclear infrastructure, both for itself and for the whole world.

The World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS) is an international non-governmental organization that aims to reduce the risk of nuclear and other radioactive materials being used for terrorist or criminal purposes by sharing knowledge and best practices.

On March 25 in Kyiv, WINS, together with Ukrainian government and international partners, launched the book «Voices of Ukraine Volume Two: Nuclear Security in Times of War». The book contained a selection of 22 interviews with representatives of the nuclear industry who were at the epicenter of events – from decision-making at critical moments to surviving occupation, captivity and torture.

The Uatom.org Editorial Board talked to Lars van Dassen, Executive Director of WINS, about the organization’s cooperation with Ukraine, through the Voices of Ukraine project, the importance of documenting the experience of Ukrainian nuclear workers, and the challenges facing the international community.

– Could you tell us about the main areas of cooperation between WINS and Ukraine in the field of nuclear security? What joint projects are being implemented now?

All of WINS’ work is based on projects funded by partners. There are two ongoing projects in Ukraine. One of them is this book, «Voices of Ukraine», which is funded by Norway. Another project is related to nuclear security training and is being implemented in partnership with the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, funded by Sweden.

– Has the form of cooperation changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

WINS works globally. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, WINS had many activities, online conferences, international meetings with a lot of Ukrainian participants. However, we didn’t have a specific project in Ukraine. This situation changed after the war started.

– How do you assess Ukraine’s contribution to global security of nuclear materials and facilities? In your opinion, has the country’s role in the international nuclear community changed after 2022? Do you think the international community is sufficiently aware of the threats and risks Ukraine faces in the nuclear field?

I think there are two dimensions to this question. Firstly, Ukraine has been put in a situation that is very different from any other country, because it is the target of a war of aggression. And therefore, it was forced to implement extra measures to protect its nuclear facilities. Ukraine has adapted its measures to support nuclear security and it is very important for the world to learn from this. How do you transition from war to peace? What are the layers in between? How do you implement additional measures? How do you transition in a war situation and still be able to keep the civilian nuclear infrastructure in place, to be able to use radioactive materials in hospitals, and for scholarly and scientific research?

In addition to what Ukraine is doing, the rest of the world is learning from Ukraine. The events taking place in Ukraine are characterized as a great transition. We used to think that attacks on nuclear facilities, and theft of nuclear and other radioactive materials were carried out only by terrorists. Now we have seen that a state can attack facilities. Russia is carrying out acts that we thought only terrorist groups would do. The world has been pulled out of its naivety, and it has to deal with a new situation in which a state is doing things that are considered to be acts of terrorism in the nuclear field.

How will the world react to that? How will the world admit that we need stronger measures against states perpetrating such actions? This situation will require significant actions in terms of preparedness and for states to be willing to accept a new situation and also invest in new requirements that come from it.

Some countries may believe that because they do not border Russia they could not be subject to what Russia is doing. But that is not the case. Every year drones can fly twice the distance as the year before. More and more places in the world can be reached by drones. At the same time cyberattacks are now a daily occurrence across all sectors. And we have to understand that only in a few cases cyberattacks are done by recreational hackers. In most cases, the hackers are part of a state-sponsored attack.

States threatening nuclear security and exposing us to these risks is increasingly the reality. And the place in the world where this is most apparent is Ukraine. That’s why the world needs to learn from what Ukraine is being exposed to.

– What motivated WINS to create the Voices of Ukraine book series? Did you plan to publish several volumes from the beginning, or did the idea come up while you were working on the first book?

To be honest we didn’t plan it from the beginning. The project developed out of the fact that we had Ukrainian colleagues who came to WINS and whom we were able to employ. At WINS, we have a tradition of listening to and learning from the experts working in the field, so we asked ourselves one question: « What should we learn from the real-life conditions for nuclear sector specialists during the war?» Since this is a new and very radical experience. Before the Russian occupation of Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia, there was just one example of a nuclear facility being occupied by another country, and that was the Sevastopol nuclear research reactor. However, now there are two more examples: Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia.

For us it was a realization that there is a new situation that the world is not aware of. We need to understand how it affects people.

So, there was no strategy from the beginning, but there was a plan to listen. And I would say that this is still the plan: to listen and to give voice to the people concerned in these situations.

– Why is it important to document the testimonies of Ukrainian nuclear workers during the war? How can this information influence the international understanding of nuclear security?

This project is important for two main reasons. The first one is that we get most of our information from the media. And in the media, you can read about a lot of things that are happening, like someone was killed or there was an artillery attack or bombs somewhere etc. However, it doesn’t make a deep impression. It gives you an understanding that something is happening, but it doesn’t really affect you. When you read the testimonies of people, what they have experienced, then it provides deeper context. Entering that context and feeling how people have been affected by what has happened to them is a moving experience.

The second reason is that the nuclear sector is a very technical sector. We tend to think that it’s all part of one big system, but it’s not. It is also a place where thousands of people work, people who have lives and families, who have barbecues with friends in the evening and so on. If we believe that people’s lives are important, then they are important everywhere, including in the nuclear sector. And it’s vital for the wellbeing of people in the nuclear sector that we can be confident that nuclear safety and nuclear security is good and reliable.

That is exactly why, instead of just relying on a newspaper clipping that says «Yesterday artillery shells fell close to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant» or «Yesterday a missile flew over the Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant», instead of just relying on what you could call factual information, you get to a different level of understanding that this is something that affects people, and it affects people’s ability to do what is important to maintain safety and security.

– The first volume contains stories of people who experienced the occupation and de-occupation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and was launched in 2023. The second volume includes stories of people from the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, as well as from the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and the State Border Guard Service. How do these volumes differ in terms of content, emotional depth, and key messages?

There are two differences and you have pointed them out in a way. The first volume focused on what happened in the Chornobyl exclusion zone. When the occupation of Chornobyl was lifted, it was possible to see what had happened, all the things that had been ruined and destroyed. Therefore, there was an issue that had to be addressed. It was also before a large number of people had fled from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Thus, it was easier for us to talk to people in Chornobyl and from Chornobyl.

The other difference is that in the first volume we were mainly concerned with general issues of human welfare, not specifically nuclear security, although security was also an issue that was growing in importance all the time.

The biggest difference with the second volume is that the focus is on nuclear security. It is about those who fought against the occupiers, those who were in direct confrontation and battle with the occupiers, and those who had to maintain the security systems in those conditions.

– What kind of reaction did you get from readers after the release of the first volume and after the launch of the English version of the second volume in Washington last year? Did this reaction meet your expectations?

There were a lot of positive reactions. I think it is the only work of its kind in the nuclear sector. If you look around on Google and type in Voices of Ukraine, you come across a huge number of projects in Ukraine that are about how people are affected by war. But this project is the only one from the perspective of the nuclear sector.

And we get a lot of requests from nuclear facilities, nuclear regulators or individuals who want to have the book to place in the library of the nuclear facility and so on. We see a great demand for more information about what the human condition is under these conditions of war and occupation.

The reaction was the same in the United States when we launched the book – the reaction is pretty much the same all over the world. I was able to present the work at a conference in Colombia in November 2024 and I could just see how deeply people were affected. You have to understand that Colombia is a country that has had a civil war for 50 years, so people feel special empathy for other people in such situations of violence, occupation and abuse as is the case here.

– The launch of the first volume of Voices of Ukraine took place in Vienna, but you decided to hold the launch of the second volume in Ukraine, in Kyiv. What was the reason for this decision?

The first volume was launched by Ukrainians who were in Vienna and participated in a panel. And they actually presented it to a very important audience, comprising diplomats and various organizations in Vienna. A lot of this information has come back to people who are involved in discussions at the IAEA and so on. One impact is that there have been ambassadors who have read aloud from the Voices of Ukraine book at meetings of the IAEA Board of Governors. When Russia has said something about reducing the risks of the Zaporizhzhia NPP and all that, they have read aloud from the book and shared the eyewitness experiences.

Nevertheless, with the second volume, we felt from the beginning that the project had to come home. It had to come home to a Ukrainian audience. I think that was always the case and that was very important and essential for all of us to present this project in Ukraine.

– During the preparation of two volumes, which stories have impressed you the most?

The stories cover a wide range. I want to say that I was very touched and moved by all of them. Perhaps I was most moved by those who talk about torture, who have experienced colleagues who have disappeared, colleagues who have been tortured. The personal experience, where you can feel in the words that they say how much they have been shattered and that they are trembling when they say the words.

I have met some of the people from both Volume 1 and Volume 2 before. One of them will be on the panel today. I met him in September, a year and a half ago. He was so shaken and so affected by what he had experienced. We have to understand how traumatizing this is. It is your life, your livelihood, your contact with your colleagues, your friends that are suddenly disrupted, and it is seeing close colleagues being tortured, not being able to return to work, not knowing their fate, etc. I would say that they have made a deep impression on me. But of course, I think we are all touched when we are confronted with the personal experience of another who has been tortured, mutilated, etc.

– Were there any moments that made you rethink your own role in this initiative?

No. But I will say that there are certain things that I and others have discovered. One of them is that when we think of nuclear energy, we think of it as a big industry, it is very technical, it is there to produce electricity, it is there to have an income for the owners by selling electricity and so on. I think that is right.

One of the things that really stands out is how much morals and ethics are essential to everything in the nuclear field. And I am thinking of the whole issue of placing nuclear explosives and weapons in reactor halls, because we are informed that the Russians are doing that, occupying the Zaporizhzhia NPP.

A nuclear organization in a nuclear power plant is optimized for its purposes. If you suddenly have an additional organization coming in, the military of another country and the nuclear organization of another country, it doesn’t work. It creates its own conflicts and situations that are not tolerable.

If you think about April 2023, a nuclear power plant built by Russia was opened in Turkey. And at the same time, the same company that built the plant in Turkey was the organization that asked the Russian military who to torture for what information. Is this a tenable situation? Is it something that gives credibility to nuclear power? I will say no.

Another very obvious consequence is that in order to maintain security, there has to be good governance. There has to be something that makes it obvious and understandable to the people involved that they are doing something good and important. It requires something from the environment they are in, the organization they are in, that they are honest, transparent and so on, and not the opposite. If you have organizations that are lying, dishonest, etc., etc., it affects all people. And then, of course, it also affects security. All these things have led me to believe that the nuclear sector is really one where ethics and morals are very, very important, not only in Ukraine, but everywhere in the world.

– In your opinion, what conclusions should the international community draw from the experience of the occupation of the Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants? Are there specific steps that can help prevent similar threats in the future?

We need to understand that threats are very diverse and need to be tackled much more resolutely. We cannot continue to think of nuclear security as only protecting against terrorist groups. One of the things that I see as the next big threat is the threat from states and terrorist groups together, state sponsored terrorism. I call it the Hezbollahisation of the nuclear security threat. This is like when you have cooperation from Hezbollah in Iran.

That’s one of the main things that we need to be aware of. We always tend to think it doesn’t have to be that bad. And that’s a good mechanism in humans to always think, okay, it doesn’t have to be that bad, but what can we do to prevent it? But now we are also in a situation where we have to think, okay, what more do we have to do to prevent it? How is it that we really need to see where the latest developments are and what we can do to be on the forefront of fighting the threats that are coming to us?

– In the introduction to the second volume, you have announced the release of the third volume, that will be written after the victory. Have you already got the ideas for it? What will it be about? Are there any stories that you are already collecting for the future volume?

The first and second volumes deal with the situation of war and occupation and its impact on the nuclear sector and human life there. After the war, it will also be important for the world to understand how this has changed Ukraine and how what has happened in Ukraine will change the world. I think this is a very necessary and important question. So that will have to be addressed and we hope to be able to do that.

When we say that the third volume will be after the war, information and experiences need to be gathered from people who have made that transition. Now the war is over. What have we learned and how do we look at the world now? I can honestly say that we have not done any shadow planning for the third volume and we are not there at all. It remains to be seen when the war is over and what the right questions will be in that situation.

– Are there any new initiatives planned in the near future within the framework of WINS-Ukraine cooperation? Probably, there are some new areas that should be developed in the context of current challenges, aren’t there?

We have two big projects that we are now discussing with Norway. Maybe I shouldn’t mention them here, but they relate to very important issues of nuclear security. And they are issues that have been identified as important by our Ukrainian partners, and where the Norwegian authorities have also said that these are issues that they would like to support and strengthen.

– How do you see Ukraine’s future in the international nuclear security system after victory? What role can WINS play in this process?

I hope that WINS will always be a partner to the good forces in the world, and a good force in the world right now is Ukraine. Ukraine is showing that it stands for Western values, that it stands for international law, that it stands for democracy.

In fact, democracy and international law are completely essential for nuclear security. Nuclear security is based on the existence of a legal system in a country, on accountability for implementation, on the reliability of people, organizations, state structures and so on, but also on the connection with other countries.

The IAEA has a whole system of recommendations and requirements for nuclear security. This is part of international norms. Ukraine is showing that it relies on that, but it is also adhering to the essentials in the way that we associate with each other, with respect and reciprocal consideration for the needs of other countries and so on. Therefore this is important. Ukraine is in many respects a role model for how we need to approach nuclear security in the world in the future. And therefore, I hope that WINS can continue to be a partner and be seen as a partner to all the institutions and organizations in Ukraine.

The Uatom.org Editorial Board