Half a century after the first atomic power plant opened at Obninsk near Moscow, climate change is widening the environmental appeal of nuclear power despite a lack of final storage for the most toxic waste. The world’s 439 nuclear power plants emit almost no greenhouse gases and so avert the equivalent of the emissions of Japan every year, according to some studies, compared with the average for electricity generated by burning fossil fuels.

But risks of accidents, such as at Chernobyl in 1986 in what is now Ukraine, mean anguished decisions for governments attracted by nuclear power as a weapon to fight global warming. “Nuclear is not a straightforward choice,” said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Climate Panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice-President Al Gore. “You can’t ignore it, it accounts for 16 or 17 percent of the electricity generated in the world,” Pachauri said. “But you need institutions in place to handle it, places for disposal...I think it’s a sovereign decision for each country.”

Some waste will be toxic for thousands of years and no permanent repositories exist for high-level waste, more than five decades after the Obninsk reactor opened in June 1954. Nevertheless, Britain decided to invest in a new generation of nuclear power stations this month, Finland and France are building new plants, while companies in the United States have begun filing licence applications. Thirty-four plants are under construction worldwide.

“There’s a big hype about a ‘nuclear renaissance’, saying that countries are looking more positively at nuclear power, arguing about climate change and security of supply,” said Jan Beranek of the Greenpeace environmental group. “It’s a dead end,” he said, arguing that nuclear energy was soaking up investment that could otherwise go to renewable energies such as wind, hydro, solar or tidal power.

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