On the theory of irradiation damage in graphite at power reactor temperatures

A theory of irradiation damage in graphite is developed, based on the interactions of three types of defect, single sessile vacancies, small mobile interstititial clusters and large sessile interstititial clusters. Reactions between the mobile and sessile defects occur at random, and lead to expressions for recombination, nucleation and cluster growth, and to equations for the concentration of the various types of defect as a function of temperature, dose and flux. These equations are consistent with experimental data on total stored energy and cluster size reported by other workers.