The behavior of the screw dislocation core in the presence of an external shear stress has been examined for the body-centered cubic and hexagonal close-packed phases of a model sodium lattice, using an effective ion–ion potential calculated from first principles. The Peierls stress for screw dislocations in the b.c.c. lattice at 0 °K is dependent on the orientation of the applied shear stress, and has a minimum value of 0.0105G, where G is the shear modulus, for slip in the twinning direction on {112} planes. The Peierls stress in the h.c.p. lattice is at least 25 times smaller. Dislocation movement in the model b.c.c. lattice takes place by unit translations on {110} planes, with the selection rule that no two consecutive translations can take place on the same slip plane.