This Letter lays out the principles of how Bose-Einstein condensates can modify radioactive decay. We highlight the challenges of many modes and short coherence times due to the $\approx \mathrm{MeV}$ energies of the emitted radiation. Recent proposals for gamma-ray and neutrino lasers claim that using a Bose-Einstein condensate as a source would solve these issues. We show that this is not the case, and the proposed experiments would have a gain of only ${10}^{-16}$ or smaller. We also analyze proposals for gamma-ray lasers based on stimulated annihilation of positronium Bose-Einstein condensates.

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• Bose gases
• Collective effects in atomic physics
• Nuclear decay
• Nucleus-neutrino interactions
• Photon pairs & parametric down-conversion
• Superradiance & subradiance
• Atomic gases
• Bose-Einstein condensates
• Neutrinos
• Optical sources & detectors
• Positronium
• Ultracold gases
• Gamma decay