Gordon Brown should approve a new generation of nuclear power stations immediately and give active government backing to genetically modified crops, the departing chief scientist will say today.

Professor Sir David King, who steps down as the Government’s chief scientific adviser next month, will use his valedictory speech to urge the Prime Minister to support both controversial technologies. A day after Mr Brown told business leaders that nuclear power has a role to play in Britain’s energy future, Sir David will say that the time is already right to give the go-ahead to new atomic plants.

He will infuriate green activists further, many of whom oppose nuclear power, by suggesting that ministers should abandon their official neutrality on agricultural biotechnology and campaign actively for the development of GM crops.

He believes that nuclear power is essential if Britain is to make significant cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

“Alternative technologies and energy-efficiency gains will certainly help the UK to achieve our target of reducing emissions by 60 per cent by 2050,” he will tell the Foundation for Science and Technology. “But we will also need to look at other low-emission ways of making energy. It is now the time to give the green light to nuclear energy. While I have high hopes for new zero-emissions technologies in the future, efficient nuclear-fission power stations are already available. I am also hopeful that fusion power stations, without the problems of nuclear-waste disposal, will emerge over the coming three or four decades.”

The chief scientist, who was appointed by Tony Blair in 2000, says that GM crops should play an important part in Britain’s agricultural future, despite public misgivings about their likely environmental effects.

Sir David has long been known to support GM crops and nuclear power, but this will be the first time that he has asked ministers to take explicit action on these issues. His successor is Professor John Beddington, a population biologist from Imperial College, London.

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