My dream project for the Chernobyl Zone was a Norwegian style prison combined with college and completely and totally isolated from legacy soviet penitentiary system.
So that we can take younger first offenders and rehabilitate them and give them purpose in life.
Unfortunately, no one in the government we did discuss that gave any shit about the future of younger generation of Ukrainians.
Well, that sounds a bit nicer.
(I assume what makes it acceptable for a prison, but not "livable" is that prison inmates do not roam around, but are enclosed in a artificial compound?)
And for whether government is interested, I suppose also depends on how much more expensive it would have been?
> what makes it acceptable for a prison, but not "livable" is that
Much simpler. The main concerns are digging (radioactive fallout is about 30cm deep into the ground at this point) and unmapped hot spots. Basically, there could be a patch of the land with radioactivity high enough that it has to be either deactivated or tagged out.
> government is interested
One of the cultural gaps between us, russian [1] people and western world is the vast depth is misunderstanding of the function of government. Our governments is only interested in personal enrichment and the well being of people is never a factor. Literally.
[1] as in "slavic people", not "citizens of russian federation".