[en] In a nuclear environment, a strong degradation of important properties is observed for many materials which are otherwise very reliable. This is especially valid for silicon, the most important semiconductor. In the presented paper, two examples for the study of lattice defects in silicon by means of positron annihilation will be given. Firstly, the degradation of silicon detectors used for the particle detection in high-luminosity collider experiments starts to limit the lifetime of the whole experiment. An annealing experiment on n-irradiated Si will be presented. Beside the destructive effect of high-radiation conditions, such radiation-induced defects can have a beneficial result. This will be demonstrated for the creation of new gettering zones by high-energy self-implantation of silicon. (author)