Hot molten lead eats structural (stainless) steels for breakfast. If you get the redox chemistry just right, a thin protective oxide layer forms on the steel su

Hot molten lead eats structural (stainless) steels for breakfast. If you get the redox chemistry just right, a thin protective oxide layer forms on the steel surface, but it's tricky to maintain in a vessel with flowing liquid. The Russians in their Alfa submarine IIRC had some mechanism for dissolving lead oxide into the coolant under way. The Swedish company Leadcold has a process to produce a protective alumina layer on the surface, remains to be seen whether it works out.