Quite a novel idea. Be interesting to see what Eugene can come up with from it.

 

If the satellite is nuclear powered, then maybe Eugene can make a tactical nuclear bomb out of it to use it on Alpha's ''nuclear bomb''. Kaboommmm and Alpha's massive herd is gone. Wait, maybe not. Maybe walkers will then turned into radioactive walkers with even more grotesque mutations?

 

The satellite was a nice device too to give them a reason to cross the border.

 

Another article with Josh McDermitt talking about the satellite:

https://comicbook.com/thewalkingdea...gene-satellite-communication-plans-mcdermitt/

 

Having some plutonium (some satellites are powered from plutonium decay using a thermoelectric (seebeck) generator however the amount of plutonium needed is very small, less than required for a working nuclear bomb.
As well as that to get plutonium to go supercritical (achieve nuclear detonation) you need a sphere of explosives around it (some faster burning than others) and a switching system that is accurate within nanoseconds, otherwise the nuke will either not detonate at all, or."fizzle" creating a much smaller explosion than needed.

To build a nuke from scratch would be near impossible even in a apocalyptic world without a number of nuclear physicists, explosives experts and electronics experts. You could detonate a ton of TNT right beside a nuclear bomb and it wouldn't go off.

Maybe the satellite had nuclear weapons on board. It's not too farfetched as it was a cold war era Soviet satellite and a.bunch of the USSR (CCCP's) endeavours have literally been lost to time as documents were destroyed and scientists killed and that's without an apocalypse.

However if there is a nuke on the satellite, getting it to detonate would be difficult.
You would need to have launch codes at the least. Reverse engineering one.isn't exactly a simple task.