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Short version: the physics of radioactivity aren't understood. This was going to be one of my 'physics redpills' like 4 years ago on Voat.

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Most places gratuitously irradiated last century were predicted to be barren for centuries, which is what standard statistical decay to 'tolerable' levels should take. The problem is that most places were re-inhabited by various flora and fauna in merely years (plant life on Chernoble, plant and animal life returned to Johnston's Atoll, etc).

I believe this is connected with the work of a few researchers who independently discovered that both beta and alpha decay can be accelerated immensely by environmental conditions, as opposed to just the statistical process that Rutherford proposed in his 1906 work 'On Radioactive Substances and Their Emanations'.

The most recent researchers are Jenkins and Fishbach, and Falkenberg. If you care for more, I'll cite and tell more of the (actually interesting!) backstory of their discoveries.

You are stupid, nukes aren't real

They certainly were pretty bad for a few years after the war. I think an American photographer traveled to Japan to do a photobook on that subject back in the 1950's or 60's. Don't really seem to hear much about it anymore.