"It's a great position to hold if you can."

It is a great position to hold and fight in, because the area is pretty empty of civilians. And russia must avoid ukranian (russian in their eyes) civilian casualties, to not loose the little popular support they have for this war.

And neither side will be so stupid to directly bomb the remains of the reactor, but I think it would need a serious direct bombing, for radiation to leak out. I don't think there can be still a major uncontrolled chain reaction. The worst that can happen under normal circumstances, is radiation leaking out.

(but all this is from the back of my head knowledge, about documentaries about chernobyl, I might be wrong)

The issue is not about bombing or not bombing it, also the area is worthless from a strategic point of view.

It's just that somebody has to be in control of it, and the Russians can't or don't want to depend on Ukrainian forces to do that right now.

Then their bombing of hospitals was a bit silly

I don't think Putin is worried about loss of life of Ukrainian citizens. He is worried about losing soldiers, or more importantly dead soldiers being repatriated on the news. They will cover up civilian casualties or blame them on Ukrainian troops. The only support for this will come from Russia domestically and it is that which he seeks to maintain with this war. Which I'm guessing he hoped would be quick and decisive, avoiding the bloodshed of Russian soldiers that will be his undoing at home.

He should be worried about catastrophic losses like that, it'd be a propaganda coup against him. Small scale killings can be swept under the rug though.

This isn't the US in Iraq, we're talking about Russia and Ukraine here

Russia still has social media. A catastrophic loss of Ukranian civilians in one event won't get buried easily.

However, as an autocratic state, I wouldn't be surprised if Russian social media was shut down if it was used to spread messages contrary to state propaganda.

"I don't think Putin is worried about loss of life of Ukrainian citizens."

Then he would just shell and flatten all the ukrainian cities. Russia has air superiority as far as I know.

Every city he doesn't shell, is a city he doesn't have to rebuild. Roads and other pieces of infrastructure are valuable, no matter how old.

And every ukrainian with family ties to russias heartland that not dies, is one family less to worry about politically.

Putin just wants to create another puppet-state, same as Belarus. He absolutely doesn't care about the lives of civilians, but ruining the infrastructure is not in his plans (only strategical infrastructure)

They probably don't want to damage the structure itself, but the exclusion zone around it is quite large with little risk of collateral damage (possibly easier to engage).

There is a lot of contamination that was simply buried underneath the topsoil during the cleanup efforts. Bombing or artillery strikes would likely cause some of that to be kicked back up into the atmosphere.

Good point.