The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Tuesday it was “gravely concerned” about the situation at the facility, which has been under constant shelling and fighting since it was seized by Russia in the first weeks of its full-scale invasion, calling it “unsustainable”. “. “There is an urgent need for interim measures to prevent a nuclear accident due to bodily harm caused by military means” at the Zaporizhzhia plant, the report said. “This can be achieved by immediately establishing a nuclear safety and security buffer zone.” But the document, drawn up by IAEA experts who visited Zaporizhia last week, does not share responsibility for the damage, which Ukraine and Russia have blamed on each other. The IAEA’s warning came as Petro Kotin, head of the Ukrainian company that runs Europe’s largest nuclear facility, warned that on a scale of one to 10, the plant’s risk level was “between seven and eight, but that’s optimistic and all they could happen at any time.” “In a minute, we could be up to 10,” he told the Financial Times. Ukrainian officials stressed the dangers of Russian occupation of the plant. Shelling continued around the facility on Tuesday, a day after its connection to the wider Ukrainian electricity grid was cut for the first time, leaving it to rely on its own power to operate security systems. Although Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are designed to withstand an aircraft impact, the fighting has threatened to disrupt the operation of its water cooling systems, increasing the risk of meltdown. “This situation could bring us to a nuclear disaster,” Kotin said. Energoatom chief Petro Kotin said if the coolers stopped working, the reactor would melt down in “about 90 minutes” © Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey/Reuters Kotin supported calls by Kiev and Western officials to demilitarize the region. The IAEA noted in its report that the factory had been bombed during the visit of its inspectors. Zaporizhzhia, located outside the southern Ukrainian city of Energodar, is operated by Ukrainian employees overseen by Russian troops and representatives of Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom. It has become a symbol of the wider dangers of Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its seventh month, as it marks the first time an occupied nuclear plant has been at the center of a war zone. Kotin said that, with the power outage this week, the cooling system was powered by a backup turbine that was only supposed to run for two hours, but was running all day.

Another backup diesel generator system only had enough fresh fuel for 10 days. Supplying them with fresh fuel to keep the water pumps running was “very difficult as they require 200 tonnes of diesel per day” and “there is no logistics for that”, he said. The IAEA report pointed to similar concerns. The head of Energoatom added that if the coolers stopped working, the reactor would melt down in “about 90 minutes”, risking a disaster similar to the 2011 Fukushima meltdown in Japan. Ukrainian maintenance workers at the plant were waiting for spare parts to reconnect it to the wider power grid, but “nobody knows if the Russians will stop them,” according to Kotin. He said the bombing of the plant began about a month ago, soon after a detailed 10-page plan was presented to the plant’s managers to disconnect it from the Ukrainian grid and feed it to Russian-held Crimea. The Energoatom boss regretted that the situation did not improve after the IAEA visit. “Do you see any changes? It’s getting worse,” he said. “Put UN peacekeepers there if you want, and everything will be normal,” he added.