Here's the argument (not necessarily my argument, because I sort of agree with you, but the argument) against your statement.
The Shaw-Fujikawa engine didn't "explode" or detonate. Slipstream is a vector-based mode of transportation, and the engine was recalibrated so that it created a brief, miniature Slipstream portal that lacked any necessary vector. The nature of this temporary portal isn't new to the Halo universe, or to the Halo games. In fact, we saw almost exactly the same thing in Halo 3--the portal that transported the Covenant armada to the Ark.
If we take that situation--namely, the collapse of that portal and the separation of the Forward Unto Dawn into two halves, leaving the one half, the Master Chief's half, in a free-float in unknown space--as a reference point, then there is significant reason to believe Jorge wasn't killed in the initial firing of the engine. The anterior and posterior ends of the Covenant Supercarrier are left falling towards the planet face while the body of the ship is gone. Which leads us to believe that the Supercarrier's body was teleported to some random vector of deep space.
Now, remember, Jorge is inside a Covenant Corvette--a ship much smaller than the Supercarrier--which is still inside or near the Supercarrier's docking bay. That Corvette not only has plenty of oxygen, as evidenced by Jorge's ability to breathe after having removed his helmet, but a fully-functional Slipstream drive. The only question standing, really, is the amount of Covenant infantry remaining on that ship.
So it's actually pretty likely, if you accept all the premises of this argument, that Jorge is alive by the time Reach falls. Where he's at, of course, is probably a near-impossible question to answer, since the teleportation likely brought him to some far off region of unexplored, unmapped space. Much like the Master Chief, Jorge is sort of waiting for an opportunity. Though the fact that the Corvette is still reasonably in-tact makes his scenario slightly less ambiguous.
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