Reading comprehension check.
These aren’t typical reactor sites. Reactors 1 - 6 had spent rods stored in pools within and around the reactor buildings. When the reactors blew many of the in-reactor (elevated) pools were holed and drained while pools outside the building lost coolant.
Fukushima 1-6 housed more than 6300 stored fuel assemblies dating to the 1970s.
When the storage pools lost power and water many of the stored rods burned.
In comparison to the storage pools the fuel in the reactors is negligible.
” Reactors 1 - 6 had spent rods stored in pools within and around the reactor buildings.”
That makes them typical. There’s no place to store the rods because of alarmists like you. So they keep them in the reactor.
The material does not burn in the combustible sense....it becomes molten.
It doesn’t float about on the breeze anymore than molten lava does....unless ejected into the atmosphere by some physical force it remains where it is....
to be cooled by water from a distance...and thus washed into the Pacific.
Virtually NONE of the material entered the atmosphere. Not zero but close.