It's hard to imagine your #1 could happen. The compression wave in a nuke has to be just right to achieve critical mass. It's not an easy thing to pull off deliberately under the best of circumstances
#2 is sort of half true. You wouldn't get nuclear material over a large area because it's so heavy. You could get a big plume from Chernobyl, but that was because there was a nuclear reaction going on, and it wasn't uranium that got boosted into the sky by the fire.
Still an expensive mess, but a pretty localized mess.
#2 is sort of half true. You wouldn't get nuclear material over a large area because it's so heavy. You could get a big plume from Chernobyl, but that was because there was a nuclear reaction going on, and it wasn't uranium that got boosted into the sky by the fire.
Still an expensive mess, but a pretty localized mess.