Considering the current state of Ukraine's energy sector in a dangerous and unstable environment, the operation of nuclear power plants is one of the most important sources of electricity supply for the state. The development of the theory of optimal control and the technical level of automated process control systems in the current state of affairs make it possible not to reduce the efficiency of controlling a nuclear power unit, not only by changing the parameters at any load, but also by changing the structure of automation equipment capable of implementing a certain static control program of power, which currently eliminates the influence of internal and external disturbances, without reducing safety indicators. The article considers the situation when the linear programming method is not applicable for solving the control problem. In this case, the decision at each stage does not depend on the decision at the previous one. This is where target programming comes in handy –this is one of the methods of multi-criteria optimization, in the theory of which decision-making problems are solved simultaneously according to several criteria. The purpose of the work is to ensure the safe and efficient operation of a nuclear power unit in an energy system that is not constant in operational states. Using a mathematical model of a nuclear power unit, experiments were carried out to simulate the switching of controlprograms. The simulation model of the automated power control system, based on the bumpless switching of static programs according to the technological methods of operating power equipment, made it possible to form a change in the current model of the control program, as well as eliminate the static control error and get the response of process dependent parameters to program switching. Also, based on the results of the research, an objective function was proposed, which includes three normalized criteria with different objectives. In particular, the problem of optimizing the switching of static power control programs was solved by minimizing the objective function, which combines such characteristics as the efficiency and safety of the operation of a nuclear power unit.