  The Solar radiation field may break apart ultra high energy cosmic nuclei,
after which both remnants will be deflected in the interplanetary magnetic
field in different ways. This process is known as the Gerasimova-Zatsepin
effect after its discoverers. We investigate the possibility of using the
detection of the separated air showers produced by a pair of remnant particles
as a way to identify the species of the original cosmic ray primary directly.
Event rates for current and proposed detectors are estimated, and requirements
are defined for ideal detectors of this phenomenon. Detailed computational
models of the disintegration and deflection processes for a wide range of
cosmic ray primaries in the energy range of 10^16 to 10^20 eV are combined with
sophisticated detector models to calculate realistic detection rates. The
fraction of Gerasimova-Zatsepin events is found to be of the order of 10^-5 of
the cosmic ray flux, implying an intrinsic event rate of around 0.07 km^-2
sr^-1 yr^-1 in the energy range defined. Event rates in any real experiment,
however, existing or under construction, will probably not exceed 10^-2 yr^-1.
