Yes, it's a wildlife haven because we decided to let animals instead of humans enjoy the tumors (see e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994720/). And it turns out that humans are even worse than nuclear fallout for wildlife. I'm not sure if that means that nuclear fallout is good. It most likely means simply that humans are bad.
What are you talking about? Not only is wildlife thriving there[1], there are multiple permanent human settlements in the area, a growing hospitality sector[2], and a booming tourism industry[3]. If you're looking at elevated frequency of minor abnormalities, you have a few hundred papers relating those to agriculture and mining to sift through.
You sound like you've watched too many Hollywood horror films. The only place to get a meaningful dose is inside the sarcophagus or to venture deep into buildings that contain dumped cleanup equipment. Both are fairly difficult to access to wildlife or civilians.
It's not a contradiction that wildlife is thriving there,
since, as I pointed out, humans were even worse for the wildlife. That means obviously nothing for what effect it would have for humans themselves.
I'm in contact with people from our nuclear physics faculty that are doing actual research on this, I don't need to read random articles from your generic newspapers. If I need to know something, I can just go down the hall and ask them. That the exclusion zone still has significant hot spots is what they told me.
[EDIT: Your article [1] says basically the same things that I did, most notably the "Nature flourishes when humans are removed from the equation, even after the world's worst nuclear accident" and "The Chernobyl exclusion zone is still considered an unsafe region for humans due to the high levels of radiation". Thanks for that corroboration.]
