Here's a BBC team's account of their recent visit to the region.
I don't really have anything coherent to add to this, yet, but I'll just rattle off a few points.
Even though the article states that people are returning to the area -- or rather the outer exclusion zone -- there's still a lot of emphasis on the return of "nature." Pripyat itself is still abandoned, as made clear in a Sept 2005 From Our Own Correspondent report by Nick Thorpe. (There's a map of the exclusion zones on David McMillan's Pripyat pages with some stunning photographs).
Thorpe's report flags the usual markers that help us navigate through any discussion of the ruins: "a Soviet Pompeii", "(p)ropaganda posters of stylised Soviet men and women still smile", cracked asphalt, "Pripyat is a town of ghosts" etc. I can't decide if the fairy-tale allusions are overblown or articulate successfully the visceral nature of his experience.