What is the plan for the sarcophagus and the remains of the nuke plant now?   Are they going to begin disassembling the thing and remove the more heavily contaminated elements - or are they going to leave it alone for the foreseeable future?

The new shelter has some massive cranes built in to help with taking the whole thing apart.

Yep, in forty years or so, perhaps even sooner if certain technologies like walking androids come online the building might be completely disassembled allowing disassembly of the core.

Of course then we have to deal with the core remnants. Hopefully we will have developed some next generation nuclear reactors by that time that will give us some ideas on how to deal with that funky stuff.

Pretty much.  In 100-200 years we're either going to have some truly unbelievable tech, or fighting with sticks and stones.

87 million years, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki are GTG now.

I know. I have been there a few times..

I do private tours, and have been using the same guide.

He takes me places no one really gets to go, but he definitely can't get me in places like that.

1) they still needed the electricity

2) they still had not come to grips with the fact they couldn't save or salvage the problem.

Yeah hopfully in 200 years we have Power Armor, Rad-X, and Rad-away. Then it wont be anything you cant fix with a stimpak.
In all seriousness I honestly cant believe how close people get to Chernobyl.

Meh, people live in the Chernobyl, just not the plant town, Pripyat. I wouldn't eat them mushrooms, though.

Apart from bionerd23, Carl Willis also has some great videos touring the intact parts of Chernobyl. Here is a tour of the decommissioned reactor unit #2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe_zzTQFV3o

Try never.

I'm as pro nuke as it gets and I don't agree with you at all. Now that the new safe confinement is in place, the risk of contamination leaving the Chernobyl site are way way down. The concern before was the reactor head would fall and stir up a cloud of dust. Admittidly there is a lot of stuff spread around the country side, but it's not going anywhere.

Fukushima has a huge water management problem. Dilution may be the solution to pollution, but I still don't want to be dumping a bunch of CS in the ocean. They can't keep the water out, and it's transporting contaminates out of the buildings. If it wasn't for that, I could care less about the melted cores. Can up the buildings and let it sit for a hundred years or so. The only way they are ever going to be able to retrieve that fuel is if the come up with a way to full the buildings with water or jello or something to provide shielding w/o it leaking out.

Its not the super long half life stuff you worry about. If it's not decaying fast, it's not giving off as many zoomies.

Don't interrupt the usual ignorant circle jerk.

Next thing you know they will find out that their granite counters are radioactive too.