Jump to content

French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by RGloucester (talk | contribs) at 19:28, 12 January 2016 (Cat-a-lot: Moving from Category:Government-owned companies of France to Category:State-owned companies of France). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission
Commissariat à l'énergie atomique
et aux énergies alternatives
File:CEA logotype2012.png
Agency overview
FormedOctober 18, 1945
Preceding agency
  • Commissariat à l'énergie atomique
HeadquartersParis and Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Employees15,989 (2010)[1]
Annual budget4.7 billion € (2009)
Agency executives
Websitewww.cea.fr (in English)
Former logo of CEA

The Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (Template:Lang-en) or CEA, is a French public government-funded research organisation in the areas of energy, defense and security, information technologies and health technologies. The CEA maintains a cross-disciplinary culture of engineers and researchers, building on the synergies between fundamental and technological research.

CEA is headed by a board headed by the general administrator (currently Daniel Verwaerde), advised by the high-commissioner for atomic energy (currently Yves Bréchet). The missions of the CEA are equivalent to those of the United States Department of Energy. Its yearly budget amounts to 4.7 billion euros and its permanent staff is slightly under 16,000 persons.[1] It owns Areva.

CEA was created in 1945; since then, the successive high-commissioners have been Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Francis Perrin, Jacques Yvon, Jean Teillac, Raoul Dautry, René Pellat, Bernard Bigot, and Daniel Verwaerde.

It conducts fundamental and applied research into many areas, including the design of nuclear reactors, the manufacturing of integrated circuits, the use of radionucleides for curing illnesses, seismology and tsunami propagation, the safety of computerized systems, etc.

It has one of the top 100 supercomputers in the world, the Tera-100.

It is divided into 5 directions, or divisions:

  • the division of nuclear energy (DEN);
  • the division of technological research (DRT);
  • the division of life sciences (DSV);
  • the division of sciences of matter (DSM);
  • the division of military applications (DAM), which builds the nuclear weapons of the French military and designs the power plants of the nuclear submarines of the French Navy

In December 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared[2] that CEA, at this time named Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (Template:Lang-en) should change its name to Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (Template:Lang-en); this change took effect on March 10, 2010, when the decision was published in the French Official Journal.

Facilities

Civilian research centres

Civilian emergency organizations

Research centres for military applications

References

  1. ^ a b "Le CEA, acteur clef de la recherche technologique" (in French). CEA. 2010.
  2. ^ See Les Echos in French
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_Alternative_Energies_and_Atomic_Energy_Commission&oldid=699505789"