Well... there are hundreds of cities where people live fairly close to a reactor, with the same lethal outcome in case of failure. They live there 24/7 and you're opposed to an idea of spending at most tens of hours a year right next to one?
The biggest issue is radioactive contamination in case of an ordinary plane crash, and parachuting a reactor doesn't sound like especially convincing solution: when planes crash, it is usually because a lot of things go wrong onboard, with parachuting system possibly being one of them.
I think we'll be much better off investing into development of new generation of speed trains: they can easily be made electric (thus taking advantage of cheap nuclear energy), riding on electro-magnetic fields friction-free at crazy speeds.
Not so, it's a lot easier to put extra safety equipment on the ground then on an airplane.
I quite agree that parachuting the reactor is not going to work - if you were flying the thing, and you had a 50% chance of saving the plane if you had a power plant, but a 100% chance of crashing if you let it drop - would you do it?
The military is trained for such choices, civilians are not.
The biggest issue is radioactive contamination in case of an ordinary plane crash, and parachuting a reactor doesn't sound like especially convincing solution: when planes crash, it is usually because a lot of things go wrong onboard, with parachuting system possibly being one of them.
I think we'll be much better off investing into development of new generation of speed trains: they can easily be made electric (thus taking advantage of cheap nuclear energy), riding on electro-magnetic fields friction-free at crazy speeds.