That is, while the number is certainly not zero, it is low enough that we cannot quantify it. In fact, it is almost certainly less than a few hundred per year - which is the annual mortality rate of coal miners. A terrible event that certainly killed thousands, and has measurably affected the cancer rates of tens of thousands more. Again, the point is not that Nuclear Power is perfectly safe - it's not, nothing is. The point is that it is far safer than Coal.
Nuclear waste is concentrated.
That is, although it is very dangerous, there is also relatively little of it. The net waste produced by a 1000 Megawatt nuclear plant, with the waste reprocessed via a breeder reactor, is on the order of 1 cubic meter per year. Now, this is a cubic meter of some really nasty stuff - but it is only a cubic meter. If the waste is not reprocessed, the 1000-Megawatt example given above would generate about 20 cubic meters of waste. Mediots seem to be very harsh on the subject of nuclear power, and silent on the much larger dangers of coal.