French Environment Minister Philippe Martin on Sunday confirmed the closure of the country's oldest nuclear plant of Fessenheim by the end of 2016, a local paper reported.

In an interview with the weekly Le Journal de Dimanche (JDD), the newly-appointed minister said "Francois Hollande's nuclear commitments will be held in the five-year period."

"I have a warrant, I shut Fessenheim by 31 December 2016," he stressed.

France is heavily dependent on nuclear power, with its 58 nuclear reactors producing some 75 percent of the nation's electricity.

President Hollande had pledged in his election campaign to cut the share of nuclear energy in France's electricity production to 50 percent by 2025.

Earlier this week, a group of activists from Greenpeace entered a French nuclear power plant in Tricastin in southern France, demanding the French government to shut down the plant citing safety concerns.

The ecologist activists has taken several similar break-in actions at French nuclear power plant in recent years, a way it wants to use to warn people of the dangers of atomic power as well as revealing security problems at the power stations.