The Chernobyl exclusion zone may be off-limits to humans, but ever since the Unit Four reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded nearly 40 years ago, other forms of life have not only moved in but survived, adapted, and appeared to thrive.
The USS isn’t that far out in space; it’s in LEO, well within the Earth’s magnetic field, and therefore protected from most cosmic radiation. But not all.
That doesn’t make the experiment invalid, just the phrasing inaccurate.