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From Wondery, I'm Stephen Johnson, and this is American Innovations.

In one of our very first innovation series, we looked at the history of nuclear energy.

But a new TV series has sparked a new interest in the subject, both its virtues and its massive shortcomings.

The HBO mini-series Chernobyl delivers a dramatized account of the worst nuclear catastrophe in history.

Time, when a power plant in northern Ukraine, threatened to poison millions with dangerous radiation.

Residents of the town were forced to evacuate, and today it's part of a 1000 square mile exclusion zone, where humans are not allowed to reside.

But just because humans can't make a home there, it doesn't mean other animals can't.

And all that leads me to our next guest, Tim Musso, professor of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina.

Tim is spent nearly 20 years studying wildlife in that exclusion zone, and the things he's seen, well I'll let him tell you.

Thanks, Stephen. Pleasure to be here.

Let's start with the basics. You are speaking to me from right outside Chernobyl right now. Is this correct?

That's right. We come here two or three times a year to do field work on the biological systems, and you know the end of May and early June is our peak season for mostly for birds usually.

I like peak Chernobyl season. That is. That's one for the tourist guides.

So, I mean, let's first things first, are you okay? Like, are you safe? Like what is the situation there in terms of just danger?

So, you know, most of the zone is not so contaminated that it's particularly dangerous sort of zooming in and out and visiting the key tourist spots.

It's not a safe place to live. It's certainly not someplace you'd put a daycare center. It's not a great place for the animals that's been in the other entire lives exposed to the radiation.

But for the short term, it's not particularly risky.

What is the actual scene there now? Like, can you describe a little bit about what the kind of landscape is and where you're allowed to go in terms of the kind of community around there?

Right. Well, you know, we've been doing research here for 20 years. This is actually our 20th year this June.

We come and go throughout the zone to do, you know, the research that we do on the plants and animals.

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