Thanks guys for the responses and thanks Jimbuna for the nomination.
just to clear a few things up Ikalugin is correct there are people living within the 30km zone, illegally they get no support from the Ukrainian government, however when i was stating no one lives here i was being specific to the villages i was visiting.
Caesium 137 after 30 years decays to Barium 137 Iodine 131 lasts around 8 or 9 days if memory serves, Strontium 90 has a half life of around 30 years and decays down to Yttrium 90.
The biggest issue and this makes the 10km zone so dangerous is the amount of deposited Thorium (which can be found in household smoke alarms and TIG welders) it has a half life of 14 billion years (no joke!) and will decay down to Radium, the amount that is your house hold smoke alarm is enough to seriously damage your insides if not kill you if ingested.
The other main elements found in the 10km zone will be Plutonium which is the spent fuel from the original Uranium rods it has half life of around 90 years, the other main element found in the 10km zone is Uranium which was the fuel for the reactor however only 16 ton is accounted for out of around 120 tons that is meant to be there, 200 tons of corium is known to still be in the sarcophagus this is a mixture of basically everything that also contains the fuel the most famous deposit of corium is the elephants foot.
Uranium 235 has a half life of 705 million years and is found around the site still today, its weapons grade 238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years and counting which is why the element is used to date things on the earth by carbon dating methods.
I don't the only people to come off worse was the Belarussians a good chunk around 20% of their entire country is uninhabitable and not able to be cultivated.
Traces of Uranium can still be found in the ice caps or the artic and in siberia and northern america
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