The release of radioactivity from the used fuel is greatly controlled by the volatility of the elements. At Chernobyl much of the xenon and iodine was released while much less of the zirconium was released. The fact that only the more volatile fission products are released with ease will greatly retard the release of radioactivity in the event of an accident which causes serious damage to the core. Using two sources of data it is possible to see that the elements which were in the form of gases, volatile compounds or semi-volatile compounds (such as CsI) were released at Chernobyl while the less volatile elements which form solid solutions with the fuel remained inside the reactor fuel.
According to the OECD NEA report on Chernobyl (ten years on), the following proportions of the core inventory were released. The physical and chemical forms of the release included gases, aerosols and finely fragmented solid fuel. According to some research the ruthenium is very mobile when the nuclear fuel is heated with air. This mobility has been more evident in reprocessing, with related releases of ruthenium, the most recent being the airborne radioactivity increase in Europe in autumn 2017, as with the ionizing radiation environment of spent fuel and the presence of oxygen, radiolysis-reactions can generate the volatile compound ruthenium(VIII) oxide, which has a boiling point of approximately  and is a strong oxidizer, reacting with virtually any fuel/hydrocarbon, that are used in PUREX. 
Some work on TRISO fuel heated in air, with the respective encapsulation of nuclides, has been published.