I am 75, I hid under a desk at school during the Cuban Missile Crisis

[NNadir]

50. Most of the world's research reactors utilize highly enriched uranium, in order to maintain a high neutron flux.

This includes the HFIR at Oak Ridge, to which I alluded yesterday, which makes ²³⁸U, and the higher isotopes of curium, as well as ²⁵²Cf, an important neutron source.

I wrote about HFIR yesterday here: Smooth trends in fermium charge radii and the impact of shell effects

There has been a movement to move away from use of highly enriched uranium for research reactors, which is possibly unfortunate, since it requires longer irradiation times to make, say ⁹⁹Mo to provide ^99mTc.

The topic is covered here: Ridding research reactors of highly enriched uranium to take decades longer than projected Technical, political hurdles stretch goal from 2018 to 2035 or beyond, Science News 2018.

People who say "highly enriched uranium has no practical uses" are simply unaware of nuclear technology, and play into the hands of people like George W. Bush, and now the orange idiot to allow them to commit murder.

As I understand nuclear science very well, I find the whole thing appalling, particularly as there are people here who think this attack on another country is justified.

Given the number of human beings killed in Iraq, one could argue - as is the case with nuclear accidents in particular Fukushima, where the evacuations caused more deaths than radiation exposure - that fear of nuclear weapons has resulted in more deaths than the one and only nuclear war ever observed 80 years ago.

The case for Fukushima:

Comparison of mortality patterns after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant radiation disaster and during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Motohiro Tsuboi et al 2022 J. Radiol. Prot. 42 031502)

It's open sourced, but an excerpt is relevant:

However, in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant(FDNPP) accident, no direct health hazards due to radiation, such as acute radiation injury, were observed, while various indirect health effects were reported even in the acute phase [2, 3]. Major health effects are attributed to the initial emergency evacuation and displacement, deterioration of the shelter environment, evacuation from nursing homes, and psychological and social health effects. In addition, there were also the effects of medical collapse, where lives that could normally be saved by medical care could not be saved due to a lack of medical resources [4, 5]. It is known that these effects are particularly susceptible to the socially vulnerable [6].

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I added the bold.

Now the rest of the cited text - some of these authors live and work in Fukushima and have always done so; their institution is Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima City, Japan - indicates that the fear of radiation killed people, but radiation itself didn't. By the way, this group has published hundreds of papers on the topic.

It is the fear that kills, not the nuclear materials. Iran has a right to enrich uranium, all nations do.