In two months, workers in Flamanville will pour the first concrete for the third-generation EPR, or European Pressurized Reactor, touted as the safest and cleanest addition to France's network of 58 nuclear reactors.

With more than 80 percent of its electricity generated by nuclear plants, France sees itself as a model for successfully putting the atom at work toward producing carbon-free and relatively cheap power.

More than two decades after Chernobyl shook the world's faith in nuclear power, France is vying to lead a worldwide revival of the nuclear industry as worries about global warming and rising energy prices have brought fission back in fashion.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has described nuclear power as the "energy of the future", stood up at the United Nations last month and delivered what was tantamount to a sales pitch for French nuclear technology.

"France is willing to help any country which wants to acquire civilian nuclear power. An energy source for the future should not be the preserve of western countries and out of reach of eastern countries," Sarkozy declared.

Such promotion at the top world body is music to the ears of France's nuclear conglomerate Areva which builds reactors, mines uranium and provides fuel as well as utilities giant Electricite de France, which operates France's nuclear plants.

"We have been running nuclear power plants for 30 years in France and there have been no major incident," said Goulven Graillat, the head of industrial strategy at EDF.

"If a country choses the EPR, it is getting the sum of EDF's experience running its 58 reactors," said Graillat. "We have 4,000 engineers working on designs - that's our strength."

When Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung visited France this month, he asked for a tour of a nuclear plant at Nogent-sur-Seine and later received an offer of help from Sarkozy to build the communist country's first reactor.

Vietnam, along with Morocco, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates are on the list of prospective new buyers of French-designed nuclear reactors, said Arthur de Montalembert, vice president for international affairs and marketing at Areva.

Areva is preparing for big business in the United States where it has partnered with Constellation Energy to build some of the 15 planned new reactors, in China, which wants to put 40 new reactors on-line by 2020 and in South Africa.

It is building a third-generation EPR in Finland, upgrading a German-designed reactor in Brazil and is actively seeking a stake in reviving Britain's outdated nuclear infrastructure in a venture with EDF.

India -- which like China is seeking to tap into new energy sources to feed its dynamic economy -- is also on the list of prospective new markets where "dozens of reactors" could dot the landscape in the coming years, said Montalembert.

"We are obviously on the frontlines to try to win over markets in these countries," he said.

Montalembert dismissed fears that any new buyer could put his nuclear reactor to work producing material for a bomb, emphasizing that a whole separate gamut of enrichment technology would be needed for such a venture.

"Of course we are not going to build a reactor just anywhere," said Montalembert during an interview at Areva headquarters in Paris.

"We are looking at countries that have the capacity to host this type of reactor, that have a nuclear safety authority that is able to regulate its operation and abide by international regulations in terms of nonproliferation."

France's decision to make nuclear energy its main source of electricity dates back to 1973 when the Middle East oil shock sent prices soaring and forced the government to seek alternate sources.

It now exports about 15 percent of nuclear-generated electricity to neighbouring countries.

When it comes on line in 2012, the Flamanville EPR will produce 36 percent more power than its older sisters and boast added security features such as a double haul that EDF maintains could resist a terrorist attack.

But in his home less than five kilometers from the new plant, anti-nuclear activist Didier Anger says talk of France leading a worldwide comeback of the atom is nothing but hype.

"The EPR could very well be the next Concorde," he said of the technology, comparing it to the supersonic jet that was mothballed in 2003 after 34 years in the skies.

A disastrous crash and high-maintenance costs brought the Concorde to its end.

A former Green euro-MP now active for the group "Sortir du nucleaire" (End Nuclear Power), Anger noted that France had yet to resolve the issue of the long-term storage of nuclear waste. A law adopted last year set 2015 as the deadline for deciding what to do with processed waste.

But Anger admitted that he and like-minded colleagues are a "minority" in Normandy, which draws its economic lifeline as much from the nuclear industry as it does from cows whose milk is made into the gourmet Camembert cheese.

Other than the Flamanville power plant, a nuclear waste processing site at La Hague and the Cherbourg naval dockyard -- where nuclear submarines, the pride of the French navy, were built -- are major employers in the region.

"Everyone knows what nuclear power is about and they have no apprehensions," said Philippe Leigne, the manager of the construction site at Flamanville. "Everyone knows someone who works in the industry."

Leigne said he spares no effort to meet with local politicians and community leaders to discuss his work -- an approach that seeks to dispel the image of the nuclear industry as cloaked in military secrecy.

"No one would necessarily want a reactor in their backyard," said EDF's Graillat. "But in the interest of the country's energy needs and of the planet, it's not an unreasonable proposition to look at a renewal of nuclear energy."

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