outside of protected, and often obviously staged "demonstrations" there is no record of anywhere anyone setting any kind of nuke off, ever. not terrorists, not in war. it's a spook that has been hanging over people's heads since the end of WW2.

best i can do is a dirty bomb. the uranium and plutonium in them will certainly melt and then boil and fill the air tho.

nuclear fission releases radiation it isn't a combustion reaction. if triggering a sufficiently large amount of it suddenly caused an explosion, it would have to be from rapidly vaporizing material and temperature sufficiently that it causes a massive combustion of sublimed carbon vapor. i don't think it would be an explosion, if you legit just set off this flash that blasts alpha and beta and every kind of radiation spectra for a brief moment, it wouldn't explode, it might explode afterwards, some stuff might explode where the gas ratios got just so with the heat level.

nope. just plain old bombs, my guy. the whole thing has been quite the propaganda coup tho hasn't it.