yeah, it's very safe.. you have areas of land where people won't be able to live for thousands of years.. and you have hundreds of these "safe" power plants all over the world.. in addition to that we have to store the waste from these "safe" plants for few millennia, and hope that after our civilization is gone, it won't destroy the life on this planet.
> "Ukrainian officials estimate the area will not be safe for human life again for another 20,000 years"
The source given in the Wiki article is Time: Disasters that Shook the World. Not exactly a scholarly work. It is also the apparent source of this falsehood in the Wiki article: "Even today, radiation levels are so high that the workers responsible for rebuilding the sarcophagus are only allowed to work five hours a day for one month before taking 15 days of rest." According to the article on the exclusion zone itself[1] and the source for said article[2], "More than 3,000 workers manage the Zone, living in Chernobyl town during 4-day and 15-day shifts." Furthermore, the article on the Reactor 4 sarcophagus contains a picture[3] of those same workers less than 200m from Reactor 4 with no protective gear. If radiation levels in the zone were that high they would be fully geared up.
The uranium used in reactors is refined from ore that's already sitting in the ground. No matter how bad an accident there is, it won't threaten "life on this planet" because if you spread it all around, it will be very dilute again.
