Following an urgent telephone call between the French President Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin the Russian leader has now agreed to allow experts to inspect Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Macron told Putin that they are very worried over the safety at Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility and any radiation fallout should a reactor be hit during fighting.
The Elysee said that Putin has agreed to allow nuclear experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect the facility.
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The Kremlin’s readout of the telephone call between the two leaders, Putin blamed the shelling on the nuclear plant on Kyiv which has created an enormous risk of a “large scale catastrophe” in Europe.
The IAEA have expressed the intense fighting around the nuclear facility as “very alarming” and the UN’s Secretary General António Guterres warned, “Any potential damage to Zaporizhzhia is suicide.”
Guterres sounded the alarm after meeting with the Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday in Lviv.
Erdogan said he is very concerned over the danger of “another Chernobyl,” following reports from Ukrainian staff, who warned in the past two weeks the nuclear facility had become “the target of continuous military attacks.”
A nuclear expert revealed that should there be a radiation leak at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia it could hit Crimea, regions of Russia including Turkey within hours.
Olga Kosharna, an expert in nuclear energy and nuclear safety who has worked at the State Nuclear Regulatory Authority of Ukraine warned if there was a radiation leak it would hit Turkey within 23 hours.
