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
Koeberg Nuclear Power Station too expensive to be viable. Nuclear power was considered because it was more economical than transporting coal to the existing fossil-fuel power stations, and construction of new fossil-fuel power-stations, which would have required 300 m tall chimneys to comply with clean-air legislation. Athlone Power Station in the city was too small to provide Cape Town's needs, and the Paarden Island power station (itself too small) has been demolished. Koeberg was one of the first nuclear power stations designed to be specifically resistant to earthquakes. The reactors at the Koeberg nuclear power station are built upon an aseismic raft designed –