EXCLUSIVE: WHO Running Nuclear Crisis Drills in Ukraine

From COVID drills to nuclear fallout: the crisis playbook keeps expanding

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The World Health Organization isn’t just preparing for global emergencies anymore. It’s rehearsing them—on repeat.

And in at least one case, those rehearsals have gone nuclear.

In new guidance released this week, the WHO lays out a sweeping push to embed crisis simulations into the core of how governments operate.

The agency is blunt about the shift:

“In an increasingly unpredictable world, emergencies are no longer rare events, they are recurring tests of national resilience… from pandemics and climate-driven disasters to chemical and radiological and nuclear incidents.”

In August 2024, the WHO held a Simulation Exercise Training in Ukraine teaching officials inside a live conflict zone to run ongoing crisis drills themselves.

Then in September, they escalated.

“Building on this foundation, WHO supported a multi-agency tabletop exercise… simulating a radiological emergency at a nuclear power plant.”

This wasn’t theoretical. It was a coordinated drill involving multiple agencies, walking step-by-step through what would happen if a nuclear facility were compromised.

“We aimed to review the ability to respond to radiological-nuclear incidents, test coordination among different actors, improve communication, and identify areas for improvement,” said WHO’s Ukraine representative, Dr. Jarno Habicht.

These simulations run through the full playbook—emergency response, evacuation, medical triage, and how governments communicate with the public during a nuclear event.

And under the WHO’s new plan, this doesn’t stop with one exercise.

It becomes permanent.

The agency is now pushing countries to “institutionalize” simulation programmes—meaning these drills aren’t occasional. They’re continuous, built into national systems, and tied directly to policy and performance.

WHO makes clear this is part of a broader global push.

“WHO is also advancing a global effort through HorizonX, a forward-looking, multi-year simulation exercise programme designed to strengthen preparedness for complex, all-hazard health emergencies through a One Health approach.”

The model is ongoing, not episodic.

“Through progressively complex exercises conducted in cycles, including tabletop, functional and full-scale simulations, HorizonX provides a dynamic platform to stress-test global and national systems under realistic conditions.”

And critically, it’s designed to lock this process in place.

“Guided by its 4Cs + I framework (Context, Capabilities, Country-centered, Continuity and Impact), the programme ensures that exercises are grounded in real risk environments, measure functional performance rather than static capacity, remain aligned with country priorities, institutionalize continuous learning, and ultimately deliver measurable health security gains at population level.”

That last line matters.

Because once “continuous learning” is institutionalized, crisis rehearsal stops being preparation—and starts becoming part of governance itself.

Ukraine is the proof of concept.

A country in active conflict, with nuclear infrastructure under constant threat, becomes the ideal environment to simulate worst-case scenarios. The lessons learned there don’t stay local—they’re turned into models for other countries.

Over time, these simulations begin to shape how governments respond before a crisis even happens.

Because if every country is running the same drills, fixing the same “gaps,” and aligning under the same frameworks, their responses start to converge.

That’s how coordination becomes uniformity.