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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