The Russia-Ukraine war has created the perfect conditions for radioactive material to be smuggled into the "wrong hands" and be used in a dirty bomb, it has been claimed.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which is now under Russian control, has become the target of repeated artillery attacks during the war, which has lead to issues with its power supply.
As the largest nuclear site in Europe, a meltdown would pose a significant risk for the continent.
But another risk is that the lax security around the plant could allow "nefarious" actors to plunder it for radioactive material that could cause indiscriminate bloodshed and contamination.
Nuclear detection expert Dr Arnab Basu tells The Mirror how the situation in Zaporizhzhia has driven up the potential for a nuclear incident in the past 12 months.
He explained: "The risk of that [a nuclear incident] in a war zone does become high, because you know, sometimes accidents happens.
"The third issue we see is of course there is a lot of waste material, and waste materials can be used in improvised devices known as dirty bombs.
"Surveillance needs to be united because there are more chances of uncontrolled access to these materials."
One recent example of stolen radioactive material happened in chaos-stricken Libya.
UN inspectors for the agency's nuclear watchdog found drums containing natural uranium which had previously been reported missing.
Each ton of the natural uranium - if obtained by a group with the technological means - can be refined down to 5.6kg of weapons-grade material.
Dr Basu continued: "In the past few weeks, as we have seen, suddenly two-and-a-half tons of uranium was stolen in Libya, which got found, luckily.
"But these things happen and if that material falls into the wrong hands for nefarious purposes and crosses borders, you could have dirty bomb incidents."
"[...] There has never been a dirty bomb incident in the world 'til now. But there have been, I think three attempts to make one," he said.
If a dirty bomb fell into the hands of a terrorist organisation, it could have devastatiing repercussions.
"What a dirty bomb is is a source of radiation or radioactive material used in conjunction with conventional explosives and basically disperse the material over a wide area.
"Its effect is more of contamination. You know making places quite difficult to be used and inhabited before all the clean up is done.
"So the effect can be quite damaging in ways, not just for loss of lives or devastation in that way. But you know the overall effect can be quite catastrophic."
Dr Basu's comments came as he told The Mirror how the risk of a nuclear incident has massively increased in the past 18 months.
He called for both countries to "stop fighting around a nuclear station" as a matter of urgency, adding that the international community should find a way of stopping it as quickly as possible.
The UK, Europe, and Ukraine in particular, should also roll out campaigns to educate the public about how to respond to a nuclear incident.
He explained that it could be similar to the Cold War nuclear warnings beamed into millions of British homes during the 1980s amid heightened tensions between the West and Russia.
