corium

noun

1. The layer of skin between the epidermis and the subcutaneous tissues; the dermis.
2. The deep layer of mucous membranes beneath the epithelium.
3. (historical)Armour made of leather, particularly that used by the Romans.

   “Passing by the Corium Bubulum of the Classical Ancients, we see in an old charter, dated 1036, "Stallus Sutoris Vaccæ," i. e. the stall of a shoe-maker who used cow-skin.”

4. (uncountable)A lavalike mixture of fissile material created in a nuclear reactor's core during a nuclear meltdown.

   “Mexico was given $100,000 to do a series of experiments in which small amounts (10 to 20 grams) of stainless steel and corium (a mixture of 55 percent iron, 10 percent zirconium, and 35 percent uranium dioxide) will be melted and then flooded with water in an arc-melting chamber.”

   “Previous studies of the thermal behavior of corium in a degraded nuclear reactor have focussed primarily on the process of heat transfer within the corium.”

   “The materials of the nuclear reactor—nuclear oxide fuel and fission products, cladding, metallic alloys, moderator, absorbers, structural materials, coolants, concrete, and so on, could melt to form complex, multiphases, and aggressive mixtures known by the general term corium.”