I like the idea of nuclear cars a great deal. Nuclear material basically gives you a hot well that never (for values of "never" in the range of the product lifespan) goes cold - you could set up any number of energy extraction schemes to turn it into power for an electric vehicle. And unlike conventional electric vehicles, the energy/mass ratio is easily high enough to give the vehicle all the range it needs. (The real trick is to get the power/mass ratio high enough to push a vehicle).
If the isotope in question is on an alpha/beta decay series, then all the shielding necessary is a sheet of metal or two. Gamma and neutron isotopes are a little more dangerous.
As for dirty bombs - they're a joke really. (Especially if said dirty bomb was trying to employ an alpha/beta emitter) Unless your radioactive material has an extremely short half-life (cobalt-60 or something) you wouldn't even manage to poison anyone before they left the area and washed off the debris. The bomb part would be, by far, the most dangerous part of the device. You can do far more dangerous things with commonly available chemicals, which, fortunately, the general public managed to get their hands on before the government began seeing it as their place to deny them anything more active than water.
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