> uninhabitable

Inhabitable: there are people living there off their own gardens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samosely

However Undesirable to you or I.

If refugees were allowed to live there, I wonder how many people would choose radiation over their current worse situations?

The article mentions people moving from Donbas (perhaps less inhabitable): "Following the outbreak of the war in Donbas in 2014, refugees from that conflict settled in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone or nearby".