Edit: ah so it was a soviet one. They also played loose and fast with nuclear safety. We still have 30+ nuclear reactors hanging over our heads in space that will come down one day. One already did and contaminated a big area in Canada, though luckily a very remote one.
https://www.reddit.com/r/elementcollection/comments/w557i6/2...
To be fair that's multiple centuries away, so there won't be very much radiation left. And since they were relatively low-power reactors, there wasn't that much to begin with.
All this instead of simply launching a satellite that does what they want? Or skipping the satellite and doing it with terrestrial solutions?
Some people’s threat models are very upside down.
Why not just load up some nuclear waste on your “shoving device” and launch that exactly where you want?
its all up there already, all you need is access, haxd or authd, and you have a dirty bomb from orbit, and the requirement to orient to the threat.
and it could be done more than once if the killer satellite survives
Instead use all that feta v you need to get your “shoving device” and just send it direct.
To deorbit one of those satellites you need an icbm capability already
Delta-v is hard.
Where was anericum used in smoke detectors, and was there perhaps some other region where plutonium was used?
Perhaps somewhere colder, more, soviet-ey?
Though to be fair, America wasn't much better in the 50s. Nor was Britain if you read about the "procedures" surrounding the windscale meltdown. Uranium rods would get stuck and people would just poke it with a stick.