The founder and CEO of Chernobyl Children International is calling for the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to be declared a 'no-war zone'. Speaking to Claire Byrne on the Today programme, Adi Roche invoked the Hague Convention and expressed the hope that the Chernobyl site, which is located close to Ukraine’s border with Belarus, would be declared off-limits for hostilities. The Irish humanitarian has been working for decades to support children and families in northern Ukraine and Belarus. Any talk of Chernobyl being dragged into the current conflict is the stuff of nightmares, she says:

"If you were to say, what’s your worst nightmare scenario? This is it."

Adi tells Claire that she and her colleagues have been nervously watching the troop build-up along the 1,000 km border and she has long suspected that the history of the region presents a chilling opportunity for Vladimir Putin:

"It’s the point of least resistance. It’s the place which is not heavily guarded because it is so dangerous that nobody would ever dream of coming into that area because it is called an exclusion zone because of the dangerous levels of radioactivity and that is exactly what Putin decided to do, to go where he was least expected to move in."

Adi Roche has spent years travelling through the area with film crews from RTÉ and around the world as part of her ongoing project to bring sick children from the area to Ireland for periods of rest and recuperation. The environmental damage caused by the 1986 disaster at the nuclear facility spread across borders. Adi says people had to move away, but they are still connected to the place by a strong sense of grief:

"Where you come over and through the no-man's land and into where there were thousands of villages and towns which are now deserted of life, because the people became environmental refugees. You have this sense of sadness, this sense of grief, this sense of loss that these were beautiful places – sacred burial ground, really."

Leaving things lie in Chernobyl is difficult enough, Adi says, as the dangers posed by radioactive materials lurk below the surface. But the idea of using the threat of environmental damage as leverage in a war is unthinkable, she says:

"The risks are phenomenal and the consequences could be catastrophic. I hate to think that Ukraine and indeed Europe and the world could be held to ransom by using the world’s most radioactive environment as a battleground."

Adi Roche thinks that the idea of blackmailing the world with the dangers of Chernobyl is unconscionable and she would like to see the whole area designation as a ‘no-war zone’:

"To me, this could be deemed a war crime, when all is said and done, when we look at the definition of war crimes, this is taking modern warfare to a whole new level. And this should be declared off-limits, and this is why I’m calling on the spirit of invoking The Hague Convention for the Conduct of War; that some places have to be declared ‘no-war zones’, because the risks are phenomenal."

Adi quoted a stark statistic on the sheer volume of radioactive material that is still buried in the zone around the disused power plant:

"Only 3% of the radioactivity in the reactor got into the earth’s atmosphere and we know what that did. 97% remains. So, the consequences are unimaginable."

As well as Adi, Claire also spoke to Sviatoslav Yurash, Ukrainian MP and chair of the Irish/Ukrainian Friendship Group, Maria Romanenko, writer and journalist based in Ukraine, Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor, Channel 4 News and you can hear the full segment here.