Chernobyl's political nonsense was mostly down to the USSR wanting to deny that anything had, or possibly could, go wrong; if anything, the exclusion zone is the opposite of the western nonsense about nuclear power.

It's our unique freedom-themed nonsense, not the Soviet dictatorial-nonsense, which means we have radiation standards strict enough that it's not possible to convert a coal plant into a nuclear plant without first performing a nuclear decontamination process due to all the radioisotopes in the coal.

That said, perhaps that's actually a problem with the coal plants rather than nuclear standards: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69285-4

> When looking at western countries like France, it shows how incredibly safe the whole industry is end to end.

Relative to coal, absolutely. But don't assume western countries are immune to propaganda on these things, nuclear reactors are there for the spicy atoms, not the price tag or public safety.