When a nuclear power plant has a failure as catastrophic as that in Chernobyl it is active (radioactive) for a _very_ long time, with no way of shutting it down. The immediate site of the power plant will be uninhabitable for about 20,000 years, however, the wider area might become safe to live in in just a couple of hundred years. While radiation levels decrease in general, there have also been measurements of increasing radiation in 2021.

Uninhabitable for humans, but it's great for wildlife (who don't care if they get cancer later in life, or don't live long enough to get it). And no, AFAIK no three-eyed fish has been sighted yet...

interesting, i wonder if we get any examples of accelerated mutation causing some new evolutionary adaptation we have never seen before

The other three reactors there were operational until 2000.

Looks like they removed the fuel in 2013. That's good.

Huh, how often have nuclear reactors been in a theatre of war? Is this the first time?

No, not the first.

Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear power plant in 1981. The plant had been completed but had not yet been fueled or gone critical (active).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/news...

No, the current structure is from 2018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement

Not active, but actively contained.