corium

From Latin corium (“leather”).

corium (plural coriums or coria)

1. (anatomy) The layer of skin between the epidermis and the subcutaneous tissues; the dermis.
2. (anatomy) The deep layer of mucous membranes beneath the epithelium.
3. (historical) Armour made of leather, particularly that used by the Romans.
   • 1825, Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, Encyclopaedia of antiquities, and elements of archaeology, classical and mediæval:

     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.

From core +‎ -ium. Apparently coined in 1974 by Martin Peehs, a German nuclear engineer.

corium (uncountable)

1. (nuclear physics) A lavalike mixture of fissile material created in a nuclear reactor's core during a nuclear meltdown.
   • 1974, Martin Peehs, “Investigations of molten "corium" phases”, in Thermodynamics of Nuclear Materials, volume 1, Vienna: International Atomic Agency IAEA-SM-190/10:
   • 1975 21 October, Hearings on the Nuclear Initiative: Technological Concerns in Nuclear Reactor Safety, Sacramento (CA): California Legislature Assembly Committee on Resources, Land Use, and Energy:

     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.

   • 1991, Sheau-Wen Shiah, Fan-bill B. Cheung, Dae-Ho Cho, Michael J. Tan, Louis Baker Jr., “Numerical Modeling of Corium/Steel Structure Interaction with Downfacing Boiling Boundary Conditions”, in Chung, Franklin, Hochreiter, Larry E., editors, Numerical Modelling of Basic Heat Transfer Phenomena in Nuclear Systems, presented at the 28th National Heat Transfer Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 28-31, 1991‎^[1], New York (NY): American Society of Mechanical Engineers, page 31:

     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.

   • 2009, Wei Wei, Xing-rong Cao, “The Simulation of Corium Dispersion in Direct Containment Heating Accidents”, in Zero Carbon Energy Kyoto 2009:
   • 2011, Pascal Piluso, “Appendix 1: Corium Thermodynamics and Thermophysics, 2. Corium Thermophysics”, in Bal Raj Seghal, editor, Nuclear Safety in Light Water Reactors: Severe Accident Phenomenology, Waltham (MA): Academic Press, →ISBN, page 664:

     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.

   • 2019 October, INIS [International Nuclear Information System] Thesaurus, Multilingual version, IAEA-INIS Reference Series IAEA-INIS-01 (2019/10)‎^[2], Vienna: IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], →ISSN, page 264:

     CORIUM: INIS: 1977-10-17; ETDE: 1977-06-02 Molten mixture of fuel, cladding and other core structural material resulting from a meltdown accident.

From Proto-Italic *korjom, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off, separate”).^[1]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈko.ri.um/, [ˈkɔriʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈko.ri.um/, [ˈkɔːrium]

Latin Wikipedia has an article on:

corium

Wikipedia ^la

corium n (genitive coriī or corī); second declension

1. skin; hide, leather
2. leather belt, whip
3. crust, coat, peel, shell
4. upper layer

Second-declension noun (neuter).

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

• “corium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “corium”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• corium in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• corium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “corium”, in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly