Atomic mass
Any mass defect due to nuclear binding energy is experimentally a small fraction (less than 1%) of the mass of equal number of free nucleons. When compared to the average mass per nucleon in carbon-12, which is moderately strongly-bound compared with other atoms, the mass defect of binding for most atoms is an even smaller fraction of a dalton (unified atomic mass unit, based on carbon-12). Since free protons and neutrons differ from each other in mass by a small fraction of a dalton (about 0.0014 u), rounding the relative isotopic mass, or the atomic mass of any given nuclide given in daltons to the nearest whole number always gives the nucleon count, or mass number. Additionally, the neutron count (neutron number) may then be derived by subtracting the number of protons (atomic number) from the mass number (nucleon count).
Relativistic mechanics
For isolated systems (closed to all mass and energy exchange), mass never disappears in the center of momentum frame, because energy cannot disappear. Instead, this equation, in context, means only that when any energy is added to, or escapes from, a system in the center-of-momentum frame, the system will be measured as having gained or lost mass, in proportion to energy added or removed. Thus, in theory, if an atomic bomb were placed in a box strong enough to hold its blast, and detonated upon a scale, the mass of this closed system would not change, and the scale would not move. Only when a transparent "window" was opened in the super-strong plasma-filled box, and light and heat were allowed to escape in a beam, and the bomb components to cool, would the system lose the mass associated with the energy of the blast. In a 21 kiloton bomb, for example, about a gram of light and heat is created. If this heat and light were allowed to escape, the remains of the bomb would lose a gram of mass, as it cooled. In this thought-experiment, the light and heat carry away the gram of mass, and would therefore deposit this gram of mass in the objects that absorb them.