Nuclear power in the United Kingdom became a public limited company, British Nuclear Fuels plc, wholly owned by the UK government. A Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) was opened at Sellafield in 1994. Construction had begun in the 1970s and cost £2.4 billion. The Sizewell B nuclear power plant was built and commissioned between 1987 and 1995, and began producing power for the national grid in February 1995. Its construction followed a four-year, 16 million-word public inquiry. As of 2014 it is the most recent nuclear plant to be constructed in the United Kingdom. Sizewell B was intended to be the first of a series of
Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station for a prototype fluidised bed combustion (FBC) coal station at Grimethorpe in Yorkshire. Because of this, the UK missed out on pioneering FBC technology, before it became internationally recognised as the best way of burning coal. Sited from Seaton Carew, and in the middle of the industrial complex of Teesside, the station was to be built closer to any major urban area than any nuclear power station site had been. To make this acceptable, the station's reactors were to be housed in prestressed concrete pressure vessels. The construction of the power station which was undertaken by Nuclear Design & Construction