> Serious question: what happens when you take one of these fuel pellets and blow it up and disperse it in the atmosphere / water supply, either accidentally or on purpose?
Hmm, nothing? There are already billions of tons of uranium dissolved in seawater (there are actually efforts to try to "mine" uranium from seawater), why would a few grams more matter?
As for fission products, humanity has made hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests, as well as the Chernobyl disaster that spewed lots of fission products into the atmoshpere. Unfortunate and stupid, yes, but not the end of humanity either. And fortunately, fission products decay away relatively quickly. So yes, a few grams of fission products from a spent fuel pellet will not make any impact if it's dispersed enough.
Chernobyl caused the near permanent evacuation of a nearby city, and nearly poisoned the water supply for millions. Not a good example if you’re trying to argue a release of fission products is no big deal.
I would like to understand exactly if/how this reactor design gets around the risks inherent to explosions of radioactive fuel. If it’s not a problem then why does the marketing take pains to say it will never leave its capsule?
The question of you asked and which I answered was what if we take one fuel pellet and disperse it.
I never said Chernobyl wasn't bad (heck, I called it a disaster for a reason!). But that was tons of spent fuel (rather than the few grams being contained in one fuel pellet) being blown out of the reactor building due to the steam explosion, or going up in smoke during the subsequent fires, and even that was far from the end of the world.
In this case, I guess marketing takes pains, because one of the main ideas of this fuel type is to make them even safer, even during severe accident scenarios. Is it absolutely fool proof? Of course not; you shouldn't grind up the spent fuel and inhale the dust, for instance.
Hmm, nothing? There are already billions of tons of uranium dissolved in seawater (there are actually efforts to try to "mine" uranium from seawater), why would a few grams more matter?
As for fission products, humanity has made hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests, as well as the Chernobyl disaster that spewed lots of fission products into the atmoshpere. Unfortunate and stupid, yes, but not the end of humanity either. And fortunately, fission products decay away relatively quickly. So yes, a few grams of fission products from a spent fuel pellet will not make any impact if it's dispersed enough.