A suite of investigations has been completed to develop and demonstrate a construction material for use in severely corrosive metallurgical processing environments. The material is a tantalum-base alloy with inclusions of Ta{sub 2}C. Alloy development work involved multi-step thermal processing to invoke specific microstructural features. The kinetics of carbide formation from supersaturated solid solutions of carbon in tantalum were established. Performance evaluation of the alloy was conducted and the alloy has been demonstrated to outperform any previously studied metallic construction material used in pyrometallurgical processing of plutonium. Specific microstructural features of the alloy have been identified which provide the extreme corrosion resistance. Grain boundary occupancy by the Ta{sub 2}C phase is associated with the corrosion resistance to liquid metal. Precipitation from the supersaturated condition invokes a microstructure with the most significant grain boundary delineation by carbide inclusions and hence provides the most corrosion resistant attributes. It has been experimentally proven that the precipitate growth rate is not dictated solely by the diffusion rate of the interstitial species and is more complex. The observed growth rate of carbide precipitates involves several competing effects.