In a laboratory at Rutgers University, a startup company, Nucon, is showing off a scale model made of an odd new ceramic. Ceramics are not known for strength, but this has the same compression strength as steel, Nucon says.
Ceramics can be used as thermal insulators, but this one is cold to the touch, a sign that it conducts heat readily. This is desirable in a material that must isolate heat-generating waste that cannot be allowed to heat itself to the melting point.
This ceramic has these unusual traits because it has exceptional density and has been baked in a process called cintering.

Cintering gives it another odd quality. Tapped with a metal pen, the model rings like a bell. The sound brings a smile to the face of the company's chief engineer, Adam Khizh, who came to the US country from Russia nine years ago. "Perfect cintering, "Khizh said. "The sound is very clear."
Nucon's material is a spinel, or magnesium-aluminum oxide. Oxidation (or, in plain
English, rust) is the big worry at Yucca. Oxides do not rust; they have already oxidized.
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INTERJECTION ONE:
Reporting a bloombergian - that's a Mayor Mike's newsmob can do better :-)
Released this day advice as follows.."The Applied Materials equipment uses a new technique called atomic layer deposition, or ALD, to put down the tantalum nitride insulator that surrounds copper wires inside (computer) chips. It deposits these layers an atom at a time"..
I beg yours..? tantalum is an atom, nitrogen also, any combo the two together has gotta be a compound. -jsp-
This report adds.. "Intel Corp., Texas Instruments Inc. and other major chipmakers are using copper in their newest chips because it helps them operate faster than older aluminum ones".
Good, good, good. But bad, bad, bad for chilly crystals and other superconductivity-type apps. In these 'mass' apps markets anyways. Likely long term, too. Why? Answer:Warren's figuring on making some more heigh when the sun gets to shine again, worldwide.
Warren, do I hear you think? Buffett.. is that better..? Warren Buffett's still second richest guy and one great conductor with most copper
this earth of ours has in the ground. Great 'cluster' guy too, meaning to say how his very recent investment in IT not only ensures global copper flow but binds likely appropoes.

Lastly--if Mike can do it then I sure can try emulate his team--has any work ever been done on chilly crystals and radioactives.. like: one cool + one hot = clean power.. (..if not, why not?)
PS: get a look at the next entry.. you never know where pretty or empowering thoughts can go.. :-) ENDs -jsp-

NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey While lawyers, senators and even an occasional geologist argue over whether Yucca Mountain in Nevada is a suitable place to store nuclear waste, scientific entrepreneurs are focusing on a finer detail: how the waste can be packaged to isolate it for 10,000 years.
The Senate's approval of Yucca on July 9 makes the question urgent. So far, the U.S. Energy Department, which is in charge of Yucca, has chosen convent-ional materials; its current plan is for a cask made of steel alloyed with chrome, molybdenum and nickel, called alloy 22, and a titanium tent above that.
The department says it needs 10,000 packages, and plans to spend about $500,000 a pkge, so the financial incentives are significant. Some scientists doubt that anything metal can sit for thousands of years without rusting in rock that has rainwater percolating through it.
A few are offering alternatives, incl. recently developed ceramics and polymers.. [Watch this space for more soon]
(ex: NYT - thurs)
ENDS 1 - jsp.