Dmytry, twice you have referred to fuel lying on the ground in undamaged chunks. This is completely irrelevent. If I wanted to be arrogant and condescending I would call that your misunderstanding and characterize you as a victem of media hype, but that would be wordplay...
When I say fuel...
ok, it seems the conensus is that with sufficient heat, certain isotopes do escape from the fuel mass is large quantities, so you don't need any "fuel mass" to escape in order for those isotopes, or "volitiles", to escape. That pretty much answers my question, thanks for the replies.
The...
My hope in starting this thread was to get views on the difference between a release of SOLID fuel (i.e. chernobyl, where fuel was pulverized and cast out in an explosion of the reactor vessel) As opposed to a release of only water/steam that is contaminated from touching damaged fuel (Japan)...
From what I can gather, the chernobyl release is most easily discussed in terms of the percentage of the core that was ejected into the environment. I have read the total activity in the core was approx. 9 billion curies, and that estimates of the total release range from 50 million curies all...