  The role of irradiation induced defects and temperature in the conducting
properties of single-walled (10,10) carbon nanotubes has been analyzed by means
of a first-principles approach. We find that di-vacancies modify strongly the
energy dependence of the differential conductance, reducing also the number of
contributing channels from two (ideal) to one. A small number of di-vacancies
(5-9) brings up strong Anderson localization effects and a seemly universal
curve for the resistance as a function of the number of defects. It is also
shown that low temperatures, around 15-65 K, are enough to smooth out the
fluctuations of the conductance without destroying the exponential dependence
of the resistivity as a function of the tube length.
