I completely agree with this. However, to prevent another source of (potentially unlimited) loot, the reactor will probably always drop damaged (or something).

Would it make sense to differentiate between integrated and modular reactors? An integrated reactor being something that is so intertwined with how the ship is built that it can't realistically be removed/upgraded/looted. I realize that this would mean that such ships are functionally useless to the player, but it'd sidestep the loot issue. Hypothetically, you could even have variants of standard ships that have been upgraded to support modular reactors, and which thus would be more useful to the player / have lootable reactors. But most ships would not be of that type.

@derakon: Yes, that's a great idea. We could even have them be not lootable (because the player doesn't have the right equipment) but still upgradable at a station (perhaps for an extra charge?)

There's not a huge amount to do with reactors anyway and selling a damaged one is impossible unless you have tinkers: we don't want to give the players loot that's useless, so adjusting the drop rate for standard (non integrated) reactors would be a better solution.