Abstract Extensive information has been collected on radiation effects on clay minerals over the last 35 years, providing a wealth of information on environmental and geological processes. The fields of applications include the reconstruction of past radioelement migrations, the dating of clay minerals or the evolution of the physico-chemical properties under irradiation. The investigation of several clay minerals, namely kaolinite, dickite, montmorillonite, illite and sudoite, by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy has shown the presence of defects produced by natural or artificial radiations. These defects consist mostly of electron holes located on oxygen atoms of the structure. The various radiation-induced defects are differentiated through their nature and their thermal stability. Most of them are associated with a π orbital on a Si–O bond. The most abundant defect in clay minerals is oriented perpendicular to the silicate layer. Thermal annealing indicates this defect in kaolinite (A-center) to be stable over geological periods at ambient temperature. Besides, electron or heavy ion irradiation easily leads to an amorphization in smectites, depending on the type of interlayer cation. The amorphization dose exhibits a bell-shaped variation as a function of temperature, with a decreasing part that indicates the influence of thermal dehydroxylation. Two main applications of the knowledge of radiation-induced defects in clay minerals are derived: (i) The use of defects as tracers of past radioactivity. In geological systems where the age of the clay can be constrained, ancient migrations of radioelements can be reconstructed in natural analogues of high level nuclear waste repositories. When the dose rate may be assumed constant over time, the paleodose is used to date clay populations, an approach applied to fault gouges or laterites of the Amazon basin. (ii) The influence of irradiation over physico-chemical properties of clay minerals. An environmental application concerns the performance assessment of the engineered barrier of nuclear waste disposals. In case of a leakage of transuranic elements from the radioactive waste form, alpha recoil nuclei can amorphize smectite after periods of the order of 1000 years according to a worst case scenario, whereas amorphization from ionizing radiation is unlikely. As amorphization greatly enhances the dissolution kinetics of smectite, the sensitivity of the smectites must be taken into account in the prediction of the long term behavior of engineered barriers.