Some proposals did include anti-ballistic-missile systems being stationed in space, but those had no nuclear payload.
This recent thing about nuclear weapons in space is about use of nuclear weapons in an anti-satellite role, which the US believes Russia is banging on a system for. Problem is that those are indeed pretty good at messing up satellites, but also horribly non-specific and will clobber many, many satellites from many countries.
The US did a test of a high-altitude nuclear explosion back when, not realizing the consequences, back when there were a tiny fraction of today’s electronic and satellite infrastructure, messed up terrestrial infrastructure and satellites, and realized that doing these was a very, very bad idea.
Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 900 miles (1,450 km) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights,: 5 setting off numerous burglar alarms, and damaging a telephone company microwave link. The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian islands.
The explosion released roughly 10^29 electrons into the Earth’s magnetosphere. While some of the energetic beta particles followed the Earth’s magnetic field and illuminated the sky, other high-energy electrons became trapped and formed radiation belts around the Earth. The added electrons increased the intensity of electrons within the natural inner Van Allen radiation belt by several orders of magnitude. There was much uncertainty and debate[by whom?] about the composition, magnitude and potential adverse effects from the trapped radiation after the detonation. The weaponeers became quite worried when three satellites in low Earth orbit were disabled. These included TRAAC and Transit 4B. The half-life of the energetic electrons was only a few days. At the time it was not known that solar and cosmic particle fluxes varied by a factor of 10, and energies could exceed 1 MeV (0.16 pJ). In the months that followed, these man-made radiation belts eventually caused six or more satellites to fail, as radiation damaged their solar arrays or electronics, including the first commercial relay communication satellite, Telstar, as well as the United Kingdom’s first satellite, Ariel 1.
If Russia uses nuclear weapons in space in an anti-satellite role in 2024, when there’s a lot of satellites up there, it’s probably going to dick up a hell of a lot of satellites from a hell of a lot of countries. Not to mention any terrestrial effects.