Despite the significant progress in the study of point defects in metals, some important problems still do not have unambiguous solutions. One of the most practically important questions relates to equilibrium defect concentrations. There exist two opposite viewpoints: (1) defect contributions to physical properties of metals at high temperatures are small and cannot be separated from the effects of anharmonicity; the equilibrium defect concentrations at the melting points are in the range of 10-4 to 10-3; (2) in many cases, defect contributions to the specific heat of metals are much larger...