The successful development of fusion power critically depends on structural materials which can maintain their integrity and dimensional stability in an extremely hostile service environment involving high temperatures and heat fluxes, corrosive media, high stresses, and intense fluxes of neutrons. Neutron irradiation results in a variety of mechanical, physical, and chemical property changes that are collectively referred to as radiation effects. The primary sources of damage are neutron-induced atomic displacements and transmutation products.

High-energy neutrons produce primary recoil atoms (PKAs) with energies ranging from less than 1 keV to more than 100 keV. The energetic PKAs create a cascade of additional displacements. About 10% of the displaced atoms survive cascade recombination as isolated vacancies and self-interstitials or small clusters of these defects. The mobile defects migrate to pre-existing sinks such as grain boundaries and dislocations, or cluster to form a variety of extended defects such as voids (vacancies) or faulted dislocation loops (interstitials).