The Chernobyl disaster: whose count is right?

Although it doesn't hit the news every day, there is currently some substantial international pressure from organizations such as Greenpeace for the UN to stop supporting nuclear power all together.  They write, on their petition page:  "Sign our petition online to call on United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and IAEA Director-General El Bharadei to stop its promotion of a dirty, dangerous industry."  This dirty, dangerous industry, they claim, "could" be responsible for 250,000 cancer cases, and 100,000 fatal cancer cases.

Given all of the good that nuclear power has done for this country, and in the interest of fairness, let's examine this claim, which, if true, would certainly undermine support for nuclear power in the international community.  So let's check out some peer-reviewed facts.  According to the journal Cancer (a peer-reviewed, scientific journal) as reported on the website Chernobyl, between 1986 and 1997, there were 45 incidences of thyroid cancer (the cancer most commonly associated with radioactivity in this context) per 1 million children between the ages of zero and 14.  In order for there to be 250,000 incidents of cancer, 5,555,555,555.55 people would have had to have been exposed between 1986 and 1997, according to the incidence rate reported by Cancer.  Even taking into account other cancers (less associated with the disaster to the extent that they were not reported on the web site) and age differentials, that number seems awfully high.

"But Jarespond, isn't arguing numbers a purely Utilitarian tactic?  If even one person dies, it's a tragedy!"

I'm not trying to trivialize human deaths, and an incidence rate of 45/1,000,000 is still terrible, given that it is 9x the estimated average in the years before the disaster, but I want to emphasize the fact that many of the estimates of deaths seem to be inflated to cause fear, and, furthermore, this disaster occurred two decades ago and, according to Chernobyl, "numerous safety proceedures were disregarded" at the same time when testing a reactor.  Given the benefits of nuclear power, and given the fact the risk of a disastrous meltdown is fairly low, a cost/benefit analysis suggests that nuclear power is far from being a "dirty, dangerous" industry.