FESSENHEIM, France (AP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy is
refusing to shut down an aging nuclear plant that has become a
symbol of growing resistance to atomic energy in the country.

The future of nuclear energy in the country has become a
campaign issue as the presidential election approaches this spring
- in part because of the earthquake and tsunami disaster at Japan's
Fukushima plant last year.

But Sarkozy, who lags in the polls, said Thursday while visiting
the plant in Fessenheim that it would be a huge mistake and a
"scandal" to close it and lay off its workers. He insisted that
there was no doubt about the plant's safety.

The plant, which opened in 1978 in northeast France, is the
country's oldest. France relies on nuclear energy more than any
other nation, with about 75 percent of electricity coming from
nuclear reactors.

Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande has pledged
to close down Fessenheim and reduce nuclear dependence to 50
percent if he's elected president in elections in April and May.

His pledge stemmed from a political pact with France's leading
environmental party and signs that the French public is starting to
question the safety of nuclear energy.

Hollande leads opinion polls before the vote. Sarkozy has not
officially declared his candidacy, but is widely expected to seek a
second term.

Sarkozy has lobbied hard at home and abroad in favor of nuclear
power, a substantial sector of the French economy. France actively
exports nuclear energy technology and takes in nuclear plant waste
from countries around the world.

"We will not close it, this plant," Sarkozy said to cheers by
workers at Fessenheim. "Why would we close it for political
reasons? ... Where else would we go to get (electricity)?"

"It's madness, madness," he said.

France chose to invest heavily in nuclear energy after the oil
shocks in the 1970s, and governments left and right have stuck to
nuclear energy ever since, even when other European countries
scaled back after the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant
spewed a radioactive cloud over much of the continent.

In the U.S., federal regulators voted Thursday to approve a plan
to build the nation's first nuclear power plant in a generation,
Plant Vogtle in eastern Georgia. The NRC last approved construction
of a nuclear plant in 1978, a year before a partial meltdown of the
Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

Activists denounced Sarkozy's pledge at Fessenheim, saying this
plant and others pose seismic and other risks, and that Sarkozy is
using the nuclear question for electoral ends.

"His speech would brush with the ridiculous if it weren't so
serious. The candidate Sarkozy makes himself into the defender of
the absolute status quo and forbids all form of debate on France's
energy policy," Greenpeace's Karine Gavand said.

France's industry minister, Eric Besson, is convening a meeting
in Paris on Friday with his counterparts from 15 other European
countries that have invested in and remain committed to nuclear
energy.