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What could possibly go wrong?

But I am forced to admit that airborne aircraft carriers like in Sky Captain would be very cool. (I guess some people like to call those "helicarriers", but I can't get past the busted etymology.)

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Airborne aircraft carriers were pretty cool when they were operating 90 years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akron-class_airship

I mean the risks are obvious, what I meant was small reactors,reactor operated only over low population are at 70k feet and short flight time could maybe reduce the risk enough to make it a practical idea? Instead of thousands of intercontinental flights, small number of arterial flights like this and fast/electric ground transport could help carbon emissions greatly.

My general impression of the original nuclear powered aircraft project in the US is that it wasn't necessarily infeasible to make a flying reactor, but shielding for anyone on board would be too heavy, and ultimately there was no real mission that required it so it was cancelled.

If you suspend the reactor from a cable 1000 feet below the aircraft, it doesn't need shielding. That might be more practical for an aircraft above Venus. It could keep the air in a balloon warm.

A helicopter or balloon with an unshielded nuke reactor hanging below it, that never needs to land, seems pretty cool.

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