If you look
here you'll see that our cousins across the pond have indeed flown a working nuclear reactor (although not actually powering the aircraft). If you read the article you'll note the incredible amount of radiation it produced that wasn't shielded. Perhaps now is the time to restart the research, the large number of aircrew stuck in the system could be used on a sort of disposable basis to test out the reactors.
Hey presto 2 problems solved in 1. Now... where did I leave that GEMS form?