Where's My Nuclear Airplane

Last summer I was browsing the discount books in the BYU bookstore, and found a delightful old one called Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious. The author, Dr. George Gamow, was a great physicist and educator who used his book character Mr. Tompkins to teach children about science. Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious was written to an adult audience and covers the basics of science as they were known in. . . 1958!!! I hope past generations will forgive us for sometimes finding pleasure in their misconceptions about science, as long as we honor them for all that they got right. Really I'm amazed at how much they were able to get right with the limited resources they had, but there are a few very humorous things that Dr. Gamow definitely got wrong... or did he?
Nuclear chemistry has always been fun to dream about because of the large amounts of energy involved. Nuclear fusion power has captured public imagination for over half a century, and the optimism has amazingly stood the test of repeated failure. Dr. Gamow himself wrote (over fifty years ago) "it is entirely possible that the problem of controlled thermonuclear reactions will be solved before this book comes off the press." While "cold fusion" has received steady research attention, there have also been more short-lived nuclear fads. One of my favorites was the nuclear powered jet. Dr. Gamow wrote: "Figure 9-1b is an open-cycle nuclear reactor which is likely to become very useful for the propulsion of nuclear-powered jet planes." Such a plane, with its nuclear fuel source, could stay aloft for months at a time just as nuclear subs stay submerged these days. The Russians and Americans both dabbled in this technology for a while, but it was ultimately abandoned. It turns out that the things required for safe operation of a nuclear reactor, such as tons of protective lead, also preclude the possibility of flight.
With the help of a newly discovered phenomenon, however, Dr. Gamow's dream of nuclear powered planes is still alive in a slightly modified form. Induced gamma emission (IGE) utilizes the long lifetimes of excited nuclear states as a form of energy storage. When a substance with such a nuclear state is bombarded with gamma rays, the density of nuclear states goes from all ground to roughly half ground and half-excited. Unlike a laser, no population inversion is achieved. Instead the excited nuclei simply fluoresce according to first order kinetics, steadily releasing energy. I'm not quite sure how this would solve the shielding problems since fluorescence is isotropic, but according to Wikipedia "In February 2003, the non-peer reviewed New Scientist wrote about the possibility of an IGE-powered airplane." Once these nuclear planes are in full production I imagine eccentric billionaires will engage in a competition to see who can fly around the world the most times without landing. Whatever happens, the future is sure to be a fun place thanks to chemistry. In the meantime, however, my native sense of entitlement impatiently cries out: "Where's my nuclear airplane!"