The European Union’s energy chief said Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant risks provoking a “major disaster.”

“The site is effectively out of control,” EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told a European Parliament committee today in Brussels. “In the coming hours, there could be further catastrophic events.”

Oettinger, who represents the European Commission, the 27- nation EU’s executive arm, said a further deterioration in the situation could lead to the deaths of people in Japan.

“We are somewhere between a disaster and a major disaster,” he said. “We are very much concerned and deeply distressed by the pictures we are seeing from Japan.”