Yes, they would have. Still do.

In fact, they built several experimental setups and were just short of testing fissile material before the program was canceled.

If anyone would like a starting point for research instead of lobotomized rhetoric like "this is magical thinking", request this paper: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19750027209

Yes, let's vaporize nuclear fuel. What could possibly go wrong with this stunning large brain engineering. It is surely no more burdensome on materials than solid fuel sealed away in metal tubes. /s

Yes that's how civilization was built. By pushing material science further and further. Do you think pressurized steam turbines just magically appeared?

Read the papers, they explain it all and characterize the tests.

Civilization advances by trying huge numbers of things, most of which are horrible and bad. The rare winning technologies survive.

Implying that nuclear lightbulbs for terrestrial generation would have been in this elite group of winning technologies is just ludicrous.

Vaporizing nuclear fuel is how we enrich it. Uranium => Uranium Hexaflouride sublimed at 57C => Gaseous centrifuge to separate the isotope. We've been doing it since the Manhattan Project, since before nuclear power plants were even a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium#Centrifuge_te...

Comparing uranium hexafluoride vapor at 57 C to incandescent vaporized uranium + fission products at 22,000 C. The materials problems with the latter are just a bit more severe!