In the months since the Japanese tsunami, we’ve heard a lot about Chernobyl as a worst-case example: here’s how bad Fukushima could have been. Now PBS’s “Nature” offers another vision: Chernobyl as a best-case demonstration that life abides despite the human race’s efforts to eradicate it. As long as the life in question isn’t ours, that is.

“Radioactive Wolves,” the 30th-season premiere of this documentary series on Wednesday, goes inside the 1,100-square-mile “exclusion zone” straddling Ukraine and Belarus that has been virtually uninhabited since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Film crews accompany naturalists and biologists who make short, tightly controlled research trips, investigating what has happened to animals and landscape since the rapid removal of several hundred thousand people.

The paradox of Chernobyl is that it became a haven for unsuspecting wildlife by virtue of its being poisoned. Tests of animal bones, where radioactivity gathers, reveal levels so high that the carcasses shouldn’t be touched with bare hands.

But the prognosis, coyly withheld until the end of the hour, is positive. (Skip to the next paragraph if you’d rather enjoy the suspense.) While the rate of slight birth abnormalities is twice as high as normal among the zone’s growing animal population (but still in the single digits), overall health appears to be fine. It wouldn’t be an acceptable situation for humans, but the dormice and eagles and gray wolves don’t appear to be bothered.