= Host institution

== The CEA

As a significant actor in research, development and innovation, the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) operates in four fields:
- defense and security;
- low-carbon energies (nuclear and renewable);
- technological research for industry;
- fundamental research (material and life sciences).

Drawing on its recognized expertise, the CEA is involved in setting up collaborative projects with numerous academic and industrial partners.
The CEA is based in 9 centers throughout France. It is developing numerous partnerships with other research organizations, local authorities and universities. As such, the CEA is a stakeholder in the national alliances coordinating French research in the fields of energy (ANCRE), life sciences and health (AVIESAN), digital sciences and technologies (ALLISTENE), environmental sciences (AlIEnvi) and human and social sciences (ATHENA).
Recognized as an expert in its fields of competence, the CEA is fully integrated into the European research space and has a growing presence at the international level.
The CEA employs 19,925 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff with a budget of 5 billion euros (figures published at the end of 2018).

== The Department of Military Applications (DAM)

=== A division dedicated to deterrence

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CEA's Military Applications Division (DAM) designs, manufactures, maintains and dismantles the nuclear warheads used by France's airborne and naval nuclear forces.
The DAM is responsible for designing and producing reactors and nuclear cores for French Navy vessels, submarines and aircraft carriers. It supports the French Navy in the in-service monitoring and maintenance of its reactors.
The DAM is also responsible for the supply of strategic nuclear materials for deterrence purposes.
In a world undergoing profound upheaval, the DAM also contributes to national and international security through the technical support it provides to the authorities in the fight against nuclear proliferation, terrorism and disarmament.
Since the transfer of the Gramat center in 2010 from the Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA) to the CEA, the DAM has been providing its expertise to the French Defense Ministry in the field of conventional armaments.

=== A division open to research

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The national and international sharing of knowledge (where possible), exposure to external scientific assessment, and integration into networks of expertise all guarantee scientific credibility.
Each year, DAM teams produce around 2,000 publications and scientific papers. The DAM's open approach also involves making its experimental resources available to the research community and enabling its teams to contribute to other research programs.

=== A division driving France's industrial policy

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The DAM essentially shares its activities with the French industry: over two-thirds of its budget is spent on purchases from the latter, with the remaining third divided between staff salaries (one-fifth) and taxes.
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DAM's industrial policy is unique in more ways than one:
- firstly, because the DAM retains overall prime contractor ship for the vast majority of the systems for which it is responsible: it thus ensures the right balance between the major defense industrial groups and the often innovative SMEs by contracting directly with the latter, thus enabling them to receive fair remuneration for their production;
- secondly, because an explicit distribution of work underpins the distribution of its budget: the DAM conducts research in its laboratories thanks to its high-level scientific and technological staff. Once a product has been defined, the DAM transfers the definition and the processes to the industrialists, who then develop and produce it.

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The DAM also aims to ensure that its centers participate in local economic life through their involvement in competitive clusters. Outside its own field of application, the DAM promotes its research by transferring technology to industry and registering numerous patents.

=== The format

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DAM comprises five centers with homogeneous missions, whose activities are divided between basic research, development and manufacturing:
- DAM Ile-de-France (DIF), at Bruyères-le-Châtel, carries out weapons physics, numerical simulation and nuclear counter-proliferation activities. DIF is also the center responsible for engineering at DAM. Finally, the INBS-Propulsion Nucléaire at the CEA/Cadarache center, in the Provence Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, is attached to the DIF center and houses the onshore testing facilities and part of the nuclear propulsion manufacturing;
- Cesta, in the Aquitaine region, is dedicated to weapons architecture and environmental testing. It is also home to the Megajoule Laser, a major simulation facility;
- Valduc, in Burgundy, is dedicated to nuclear materials and the Epure experimental facility of the Simulation program;
- Le Ripault, in the Centre region of France, dedicated to non-nuclear materials (chemical explosives, etc.);
- Gramat, (formerly DGA) in the Midi-Pyrénées region, conducts system vulnerability and weapons effectiveness activities on behalf of the French Defense Ministry.
  
== The DAM Île-de-France center

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CEA/DAM - Île de France (DIF) is one of DAM's operational divisions.
The DIF site employs around 2,000 CEA staff and welcomes around 600 employees from outside companies daily. It is located in Bruyères-le-Châtel, about 40 km south of Paris, in the Essonne department.
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DIF's missions include :
- the design and guarantee of nuclear weapons, thanks to the Simulation program. The challenge is to reproduce the different phases in the operation of a nuclear weapon and to compare these results with measurements from past nuclear firings and experimental results obtained on current facilities (radiographic machine, power lasers, particle accelerators);
- the effort against proliferation and terrorism, in particular by contributing to the Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards program and by providing French technical expertise for the implementation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT);
- scientific and technical expertise for the construction and dismantling of complex structures, as well as for environmental monitoring and earth sciences;
- alerting the authorities, an operational mission carried out 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in the event of nuclear tests, earthquakes in France or abroad, and tsunamis in the Euro-Mediterranean zone. The DIF provides the authorities with related analyses and technical summaries.

Since 2003, the DAM Île-de-France center has been home to the CEA's scientific computing facilities, which bring together all the CEA's supercomputers:
- the EXA1 supercomputer for the CEA/DAM Simulation program, successor to TERA 1000, with 23.2 petaflops computing power, i.e., capable of performing 23.2 million billion floating-point operations per second.
- Computers at the Centre de Calcul pour la Recherche et la Technologie (CCRT), open to the research community and industry, for a total power of 8.8 petaflops.
- The 22 petaflops Joliot-Curie supercomputer, the second in a network of petaflops-class supercomputers for researchers in the European scientific community. This supercomputer is housed at the TGCC (Très Grand Centre de Calcul) and operated by CEA teams, thus contributing to France's participation in the PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) project.
