We are still very interested in the neutron radiation-induced volume expansion mechanism of rock-forming minerals from a viewpoint of aging management and long-term operation of nuclear power plants.
My colleague, A/Prof. Kenta Murakami has conducted the ion-irradiation on the different kinds of minerals and also confirmed the point-defects annealing by using ESR, and we confirmed that the point-defects is a kind of trigger and not the direct index for volume expansion.
We need to learn more about the viscous behavior of quartz in the low-temperature range.

K. Murakami, L.V. Nhut, H. Samouh, T. Ohkubo, S. Kano, M. Nishikawa, K. Suzuki, I. Maruyama, Relationship between ion irradiation-induced amorphization and volume expansion in quartz and feldspars for concrete aggregates, J. Nucl. Mater. (2024) 155326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2024.155326.