The professor is obviously very intelligent but not smart. He is arguing the facts and the science. The opposition is blind, stupid and vicious as they have a religious objection to "Nuclear". By that I mean an irrational and hateful objection.
I remember the CND the Committee for Nuclear Disarmement. The committee of 100. That is 100 self appointed nutters who were against the West and in favour of communism. That turned out well for them, they lost the argument but are still fighting the war against common sense.
Now bring on the nutters with their "Peer reviewed" nonsense and waffle.

Congratulations to the author and to the Editor, Graham Young, for publishing a factual, informative and valuable post. I hope it will be read and digested by those people who are genuinely searching for the facts and sensible balance on the nuclear energy debate, instead of the repetition of the tired, 50 year old, BS, spin, disinformation and anti-nuke propaganda that is expounded by Greenpeace and the rest of the so called environmental NGOs and greenie activists.

I'll add a couple of points.

If nuclear power replaced coal for electricity generation world wide, it would avoid over 1 million fatalities per year:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html

If we allowed small nuclear power plants to be cheaper, clean electricity generation could be rolled out more quickly to the 1.2 billion people who don't have electricity. About 3.5 million people per year die as a result of indoor pollution (according to WHO) from burning, dung and rubbish. Getting them connected to electricity would deliver enormous benefits and avoid millions more lives per year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/opinion/the-poor-need-cheap-fossil-fuels.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&

Then of course there is always the forever-and-a-day lingering problem of the effects of depleted uranium. Why not google Images For Depleted Uranium Iraq.
And on the topic of the nuclear disarmanent "nutters" why not read section 1-21 to 1-28 available via this reference:
http://www.dabase.org/not2p1.htm

"At present, a culture of total war, a culture of death, is ruling, while the people are engrossed in consumerism." 1.28

It's what I've been saying for yonks. We spent too much time in Harvey Norman and not enough time thinking about where our world run by capitalist Corporations and the Mega-riche was heading!

We've been silly. There is a heavy price to pay.

Thanks for the link, Daffy!

" blind adherence to narrow judgments" That seems to be what this author thinks of people, like myself, who accept the World Health Organisation, the American Academy of Science, and all reputable heath bodies' judgment that there is no safe level of ionising radiation.

This article pontificates, dazzling us with scientific jargon - but in reality is merely trotting out the discredited quack theories of "radiation hormesis" and "adaptive radiation"

Professor Allison makes some good points about radiation risks and the misconceptions which surround it.
It is difficult for lay people to get risks into perspective, I have been involved in negotiations with regulatory authorities and residential groups as to use of industrial chemicals and have struck similar reactions. One tactic I used was to always have an MSDS for petrol with me, amazing how toxic that stuff is wrt many industrial chemicals.
I think the issue of nuclear energy has ramifications beyond those considered by Professor Allison.
The first issue is the longevity of the presence of radioactive waste generally, it will have to be stored for millennia and the probability of accidental or deliberate exposure problems is not trivial. Worse issues are the nuclear sarcophagi enclosing accident sites such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Windscale and presumably soon to include Fukushima.
The second issue is that of the failure of complex systems. It can be convincingly demonstrated that a system or process can be operated safely as Professor Allison has done in the case but the real problem is “will it be operated safely”
Rail freight transport has been in use for well over a hundred years and could be said to operate generally in a very safe way, particularly compared to road transport. The accident at Lac-Mégantic is a classic case of system failure where cost cutting and removal of necessary safety procedures was a direct cause of the disaster. In the long time periods found in nuclear power generation, serious accidents are a certainty.
The problem that humanity faces with energy and resource depletion is just that there are far too many people on earth.