Area my wife comes from is about 200 miles from Chernobyl but was affected by the radiation, especially their local town which is dominated by its granite quarry. Where the town is a designated area, they got a bit of extra funding, earlier retirement at 55 & a slightly higher pension but still around the average pension of £15pm. The real heavy pollution was confined to the exclusion zone & over the border in Belarus with further a field affected mainly by Caesium 137 which has a half life of 30 years. Radio active Iodine only has a half life of 8 days, but because no precautions were taken to stop milk production, some children did get Thyroid cancer. Harvesting wild mushrooms in the autumn which can have higher levels of radiation has carried on as normal with no statistically significant increases of cancer in those not directly involved in the near accident area or directly involved in controlling it.
Ukrainians are thousands more likely to die from industrial & car accidents or drinking themselves to death with Vodka with a average age span of 66 years, whereas for women it is the high 70's. A litre of village distilled vodka of up to 90% alcohol cost 3p & my MIL's neighbour drinks at least one of those everyday & during the summer takes their milk cow to the local communal pasture, bottle of vodka in hand as he goes to spend the day 'looking after it' as he swigs the bottle. Village unemployment is high & even if there was any work a significant minority could not do normal work where the daily bottle always wins. Where in the UK male v female parity is reached at about 35 due to higher male mortality rate where it's reached at 18 in Ukraine with the number of women massively exceed the number of men by the time the women get into their 30s. Russian statistics are much worse than this & they also have a high incidence of AIDS so the average male only lives to 60. Ruaaian women has been voted the most beautiful & they certainly have more than average number of real beautiful ones.
Interviews I've read on Ukrainians who were directly involved in the disaster & have watched these programs is that the series in very different to what it was actually like there at the time, as it is a story & dramatisation based on what happened.
Background radiation varies considerably around the world & granite rock is naturally high where volcanoes have spewed it out from the highly radioactive earth's core. Some of the Black Sea black sand beaches in Ukraine are alarmingly so from natural radiation. In the UK Cornwall is high with radioactive Radon gas a hazard, so houses have to have ventilation systems to keep it at safe levels. We & other animals have to cope with background radiation & cosmic events so we do have a natural built-in amount of radiation hardness which also means that wildlife in the exclusion zone has risen massively where they don't have to compete against humans & have shown few affects to the much higher than natural radiation.