A review and discussion of the conditions leading to liquid metal ignition including experimental determination of an ignition envelope for liquid lithium are presented. A simple lumped model is used to investigate the necessary conditions (liquid metal and water temperatures) for liquid metal ignition to be imminent. Both the experimental and model results indicate that as the liquid metal temperature is increased, the water temperature required for interaction to proceed to a vapor phase reaction decreases. A rate equation for the reaction of lithium-lead alloy (Li17Pb83) is determined using a mass transport reaction model. The results indicate that the reaction of this lithium-lead alloy with water can be represented by a parabolic rate law.