Yes thanks I do know how many official deaths there were and I also know that alternative numbers in the low thousands are still under reported.

We met with a variety of people there and the coal miner deaths alone are in the thousands. Liquidator deaths are far closer to tens of thousands.

Oh and you think Chernobyl was bad as it was? If the inital coal miners hadn't been sent down in the first few days you would have been looking a far far far worse explosion that would have irradiated (and effectively made unihabitable hundreds of kilometers). So bad the USSR was plannning on the basis it would have had the radiation effects expected of a 4+ megaton nuclear weapon. Oh and to top it off they assumed the explosion would have also destroyed and set off the other still working reactors...

Nuclear is not the answer.