Chinese nuclear power plant could power a DeLorean

I loved Back to the Future day last week when the world celebrated the date Marty and Doc travelled to when going ‘back to the future’, writes Jeffrey Ball.

If my calculations are correct, there were 88 companies an hour shoehorning its classic quotes and references into their articles and adverts.

How shameless.

In the first film, Doc is killed by the Libyans for stealing their plutonium he needed to power the DeLorean.

But that was 1985 and it raises an important question: where these days could you get some plutonium?

One of a number of agreements revealed during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to the UK last week was to build a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point, in Somerset.

This is great news for time travellers as (here comes the science bit) the uranium U238 which the new plant is designed to run on produces small amounts of plutonium Pu239 as a waste product.

As long as time travellers can A) convince the plant to give them the used fuel B) not die from the radiation exposure and C) reprocess it in their garage to extract the plutonium, hoverboards here we come.

EDF energy, which is 85 per cent-owned by the French government, reached an £18bn agreement with China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) to build the plant to start generating by 2025, as well as two more stations in Suffolk and Essex.

The UK needs new power stations.

The last nuclear power plant was built a generation ago and it was around this time last year, not for the first time, that London-listed National Grid was highlighting the risk of power shortages due to limited spare capacity in the UK energy network if and when demand peaked over Christmas.

Ageing and polluting power stations have been shut down without replacement for many years now and the likes of National Grid and its peers have been using alternative sources to keep the lights turned on for a while now.

Eon has a biomass plant in Shropshire, but a fire at the plant in 2014 forced a temporary shutdown.

Incidents like this can happen at any facility, and have, and every time they do it increases the pressure on the UK energy network.

Why has it taken so long to agree to build a new plant?

Understandably, it is not something you rush in to, given the costs and dangers involved.

Tony Blair actually announced a review of the UK’s energy policy a decade ago, with the Hinkley Point consultation starting back in 2008.

However, when earthquakes and a tsunami in Japan 2011 led to the Fukishima nuclear plant going into meltdown and releasing plutonium Pu239 into the environment, the image of the nuclear power industry was equally damaged and a raft of projects were put under review.

Four years on and the dust has settled enough for it to again become front page news.

You could assume that increased supply should lead to a fall in prices but that is not the case.

The energy sector is one beset by subsidies that inflate the prices we pay.

This looks likely to rise as the government has agreed that the minimum price households and businesses will pay to the plant per megawatt hour will be £92.50.

That’s compared to the average daily price in August according to Energy UK of £40.06 MWh.

It is important to highlight this average price is artificially low due to being dragged down by a drop in the coal price but there are enough caveats to suggest it may be an issue in the coming years.

The bad news, however, is that it will cost £111,925 to produce the 1.21 gigawatts required to power the DeLorean’s time circuits, so until the prices drop, sadly I will not be going back to the future anytime soon.

Jeffrey Ball is assistant director at Newcastle wealth management firm Brewin Dolphin.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily the views held throughout Brewin Dolphin. No director, representative or employee of Brewin Dolphin accepts liability for any direct or consequential loss arising from the use of this document or its contents. Any tax allowances or thresholds mentioned are based on personal circumstances and current legislation which is subject to change.