“radiation units in Chernobyl are not working”

In a statement Monday, the agency also said there are no more firefighters available in the region to protect forests contaminated by decades of radioactivity, while the weather is heating up. The plant was taken over by Russian forces on 24 February.

According to Monday's statement, combining certain risks could mean a significant “x1> capacity to control the spread of radiation not only in Ukraine, but beyond the country's borders in the coming weeks and months.

The Chernobyl plant's management team said on Sunday that 50 staff members who had been working without letup since Russia's takeover have been changed and replaced.

Ukraine told the International Atomic Energy Agency that about half of the “staff at the end of” were able to return to their homes Sunday after working at the site for nearly four weeks, said agency General Director Rafael Gross.

Those who left were replaced by other Ukrainian personnel, Gross said in a statement late Sunday.

The “is a positive development, although long delayed, that some staff members in Chernobyl have now changed and returned to their families”, Gross said.

“They deserve our respect and full admiration that they worked in these extremely difficult circumstances. They were there for a long time. I sincerely hope that the remaining staff can soon be changed”.

On February 24, the day Russia attacked Ukraine, Moscow troops seized the Chernobyl complex, the 1986 nuclear smelter that caused the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history.

About 100 members of technical personnel have worked surrounded by armed guards to maintain the complex.

Gross, who had expressed deep concern for the well-being of Ukrainian personnel, “welcomed the news of the partial rotation of personnel”, the agency said.

Before today's rotation, the same task force had been instead of one day before Russian forces entered the area,” he added.

It is unclear why Russian soldiers took control of Chernobyl, where the destroyed reactor is kept under strict surveillance within a concrete and lead sarcophagus, and the other three reactors are being deactivated.

In 2017 the reactor was one of several Ukrainian targets hit by a massive cyberattack that was thought to have originated in Russia, which briefly took its radiation monitoring system off the grid. /voa