The UN’s nuclear chief has been pleading with Ukraine and Russia to allow experts to visit Europe’s largest nuclear plant - located in Ukraine - as fears of a disaster rise.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said the plant “is completely out of control” and that it needs to be stabilised to avoid a nuclear accident.
He told the Associated Press that the situation is getting more critical every day at the Zaporizhzhia plant in the south-eastern city of Enerhodar - but Russian troops seized the area back in March.
READ MORE: Fears over nuclear accident grow as power plant in Ukraine 'completely out of control'
"Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated" at the plant, he said, adding that "what is at stake is extremely serious and extremely grave and dangerous."
Mr. Grossi explained that there have been many violations of the plant's safety, and that it is "in a place where active war is ongoing", near Russian-controlled territory.
The physical integrity of the plant has not been respected due to shelling at the beginning of the war when it was taken over.
There is "a paradoxical situation" in which the plant is controlled by Russia, but its Ukrainian staff continues to run the nuclear operations, leading to inevitable moments of friction and alleged violence, Mr. Grossi said.
Meanwhile, the IAEA has some contact with staff, and they are "faulty" and "patchy", he said.
The nuclear chief said the supply chain of equipment and spare parts has been interrupted, "so we are not sure the plant is getting all it needs.”
The IAEA also needs to perform vital inspections to ensure that nuclear material is being safeguarded, "and there is a lot of nuclear material there to be inspected", he said.
"When you put this together, you have a catalogue of things that should never be happening in any nuclear facility," Mr Grossi said.
"And this is why I have been insisting from day one that we have to be able to go there to perform this safety and security evaluation, to do the repairs and to assist as we already did in Chernobyl."
The Russian seizure of Zaporizhzhia renewed fears that the largest of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors could be damaged, setting off another emergency like the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the world's worst nuclear disaster, which happened about 110 kilometres (65 miles) north of the capital Kyiv.
Russian forces occupied the heavily contaminated site soon after the invasion but handed control back to the Ukrainians at the end of March.
Mr Grossi visited Chernobyl on April 27 and tweeted that the level of safety was "like a 'red light' blinking,” but said that the IAEA set up "an assistance mission" at Chernobyl at that time "that has been very, very successful so far".
The IAEA needs to go to Zaporizhzhia, as it did to Chernobyl, to ascertain the facts of what is actually happening there, to carry out repairs and inspections, and "to prevent a nuclear accident from happening.”
The IAEA boss said he and his team need protection to get to the plant and the urgent co-operation of Russia and Ukraine.
"The IAEA, by its presence, will be a deterrent to any act of violence against this nuclear power plant," Mr Grossi said.
"So I'm pleading as an international civil servant, as the head of an international organisation, I'm pleading to both sides to let this mission proceed."
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