By coupling statistics and heat transfer, we investigate numerically laser-induced crystal damage by multi-gigawatt nanosecond pulses. Our model is based on the heating of nanometric absorbing defects that may cooperate when sufficiently aggregated. In that configuration, they induce locally a strong increase of temperature that may lead to a subsequent damage. This approach allows to predict cluster size distribution and damage probabilities as a function of the laser fluence. By studying the influence of the pulse duration onto the laser-induced damage threshold, we have established scaling laws that link the critical laser fluence to its pulse duration tau. In particular, this approach provides an explanation to the deviation from the standard tau(1/2) scaling law that has been recently observed in laser-induced damage experiments with KH(2)PO(4) (KDP) crystals [J.J. Adams et al., Proc. of SPIE 5991, 5991R-1 (2005)]. In the present paper, despite the 3D problem is tackled, we focus our attention on a 1D modeling of thermal diffusion that is shown to provide more reliable predictions than the 3D one. These results indicate that absorbers involved in KDP damage may be associated with a collection of planar defects. First general comparisons with some experimental facts have been performed.