Wont a conventional explosive wrapped around a nuclear payload (ie a dirty bomb) do a whole lot of damage from the radiation? The blasts don't concern me, cities can be rebuilt, but not if the land is radioactive for a hundred years.
Chernobyl was effectively a "dirty bomb." It was bad, but not nearly as bad as was predicted. Many people have visited the Chernobyl exclusion zone (legally and illegally) and found it is doing pretty well. (Most recent visitors were Russian soldiers - Russia actually invaded Ukraine through the Chernobyl exclusion zone.)
Not an expert but I think no, that's not how that works. You can't detonate a nuclear weapon without the mechanism to enact the fission. A dirty bomb meaning just a normal explosion with some radioactivity in it, is probably... not actually that bad? At least, not in the context of how bad things are already. Hundred years sounds far too long.
