> Deaths: 42 acute and delayed (several months), less than 100 at present, possibly several thousand long term extra cases of cancer
In other words, if you just count people killed at the site, Chernobyl killed less people than Nigerian oil pipe explosion of 1998, or 2000, or 2003, or 2006. (Damn, why does Nigeria have so many disasters?) Hardly nobody remembers them, because fossil-fuel deaths aren't newsworthy, unlike radiation deaths.
Of course, if you count the number of extra cancer deaths attributable to Chernobyl, it becomes much higher - maybe thousands, which is basically what you called "according to some models do some other stuff that if you squint hard..."
Compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, and nuclear always comes out safer.
How much worse could it possibly have gotten?!
> But people don't actually die because there's ash in the air or mercury in tuna fish.
Just because it doesn’t go out and visibly stab them to death doesn’t mean people don’t die from them.
So, no, nuclear disasters did actually kill people and objectively more than coal power plants.