The Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster forced more than 330,000 people to leave their homes.  The densely populated area has turned into a ghost city and a 2,600-kilometer exclusion zone has been set up, but we can still see all kinds of plants. Aren't plants afraid of being affected by nuclear radiation?  
All but the most vulnerable and exposed plants did not die, and even in the most irradiated parts of the region vegetation came back to life within three years. Why is it that plants are so resistant to radiation and nuclear disaster?  To answer this question, we first need to understand how radiation from a nuclear reactor affects living cells.  Chernobyl's radioactive material is "unstable" because it constantly releases high-energy particles and waves that damage cellular structures or create chemical reactions that attack cellular machinery.  
Most of the cell is replaceable if damaged, but DNA is an exception.  At higher radiation doses, DNA becomes confused and cells die quickly.  Lower doses can cause more subtle damage in the form of mutations that change the way cells function, causing them to become cancerous, multiply uncontrollably, and spread to other parts of the body, for example.  In animals, this is often fatal because their cells and systems are highly specialised and inflexible.  However, plants grow in a much more flexible and organic way, and because they can't move, they have no choice but to adapt to their environment, unlike animal cells, almost all plant cells can produce any type of new cell a plant needs.  
All of this means that plants can replace dead cells or tissues more easily than animals, whether the damage is caused by an animal attack or radiation.  While radiation and other types of DNA damage can cause tumors to form in plants, mutant cells generally can't spread from one part of the plant to another the way cancer can because of the hard, interconnected cell walls that surround plant cells.  In the vast majority of cases, such tumors are not fatal because plants can find a way around the offending living tissue.  
 
Radiation does have appreciable harmful effects on plants and may shorten the life span of individual plants and animals.  But if life-sustaining resources are in plentiful supply and the damage is not fatal, life thrives.  While the nuclear accident did cause some damage, it did far less damage to the local ecosystem than humans have to the earth's environment.  As humans were driven away from the nuclear accident zone, it also created some space for nature to return.